New Number, Who Dis?

::Trigger Warning::

Implied domestic violence, implied murder, bros

“Welcome to Spirit Wireless, how can I help you get connected?” The salesgirl was pretty, perky, and sharply dressed in a maroon polo shirt and khaki pants. He made quick note of her name tag—“Casey”. Any other time he would have made a comment about her connecting with him, instead he made a mental note to come back to this store closer to closing, next time.

“Hi Casey, I’m Mitch, and I need a new phone,” he said, instead.

She looked slightly annoyed at his over-familiarity, but continued professionally, “Okay, will you be needing a new number, or transferring over an old one?”

“I need a new one. My ex has blown up my message box for the last time, and I need a fresh start.” He hoped this signaled the fact that he was now single.

“Okay, sir, I would be more than happy to assist you with that.”

Ouch, the “sir” was a definite boundary-setter—she was no younger than him. Mitch followed her over to the display of phones while she asked, “Are you interested in any specific phone?” He tried to pretend that he was not concerned about price tags as he pointed to an iPhone two generations old.

She waited a beat before saying, “Well, we have just introduced our own line of phones, and our latest has more features than this for the same price. I can show you one, if you are interested.”

Mitch was definitely interested, in more ways than one, but tried to sound cool as he said, “Sure, I’ll check it out.” She walked to the back while he waited a minute, then returned with a glossy black box. 

“This is our Spirit Ulta, just released last month” she said while opening the box. “This also comes with no contract, unlimited texting, calling, internet and streaming, for one flat monthly rate.” 

She handed him the phone, and Mitch was surprised at the high quality. He had been expecting a light-weight, plastic phone, but this one had a nice heft to it. It was about the size of the older iPhones, but this screen went all the way to the edges. Casey went over the impressive features, then told him the price—Mitch was sold. At this point, he was even more excited about the phone than the girl.

Casey quickly wrote up the sale, set up the SIM card, and asked if he wanted to transfer my old contacts and emails to this phone. 

“No thank you,” he said. He was buying this phone to make a break from his old contacts, and certainly did not want to keep them with him. “I want a clean slate,” he explained.

“Dude, Sean!” Mitch called as he was walking out the door, “I just got a sweet new phone at Spirit, and the clerk was pretty sweet, too!” 

Sean laughed. “Save this number, but don’t give it to ANYONE,” Mitch warned.

The phone rang for the first time as Mitch was making dinner. He had just gotten his mac-and-cheese out of the microwave, and he set it down so quickly that he burned his fingers. He didn’t recognize the number, so he sent it straight to voicemail. He sat down to eat and scroll through his social media accounts, but it was just the usual lame show-offs and cop videos. He watched a couple of funny videos of chicks getting arrested while trying to say they weren’t drunk, but by the time he finished eating that became boring, too. He turned on his gaming console and had just joined a CoD game when the phone rang, again. Different number, but he still didn’t recognize it; he sent that one to voicemail, too. The CoD squad he had joined was lame, and they got killed off in the first 15 minutes. He searched to see if any of his friends were on, with no luck, so he joined a few more random squads which were just as bad. By then, the phone had rung three more times, so he decided to check the voicemails out of boredom, morbid curiosity, and a little bit of voyeurism.

“Hi, Dad?” a teenage boy or girl said, “It’s me. I miss you, call me!” Mitch laughed at the obviously wrong number.

“Hey, Butch!” an older man, this time. “I missed you last week, so I figured I’d stop by again today and see if you were here. Where the hell are you?” Wrong number, again.

“Nick?” This sounded like a young woman, and she was angry, “Pick up the damn phone, you can’t leave me here!!”

Mitch decided to set an outgoing voicemail message. “New phone, who dis?” He tried to sound hard and gangsta, but realized it probably just sounded lame. He decided that it was funny, anyway, and left it.

The next time the phone rang, he set it to silent. Sean was the only one with his new number, so he figured all the calls would be for the person who had this number before. The joke was on him, because the next call, right after midnight, really was Sean.

“Dude, I was leaving the bar and a cop started following me, so I pulled into some random driveway and shut the car off. The cop left, but now my fucking car won’t start.” Mitch called him back, laughing. Mitch and Sean had been saving each others’ asses for years, but Sean wasn’t amused. 

“I’m about four blocks from Lilah’s house, I just need someone to help me push this piece of shit!” He sounded drunk, but Mitch was still laughing.

 “Dude it’s a Geo, can’t you just carry it?” 

“You gonna help, or just make jokes?” 

Mitch got the address from him, went out to his truck and found a sturdy rope, and headed over. He found Sean and his car in the driveway of an abandoned house. They pushed the Geo out of the driveway and attached the rope to both vehicles to tow it. As Sean got behind the wheel of the Geo, he finally regained his sense of humor, “Now I’m not DUI, just SUI—steering while drunk!” Mitch wasn’t going to point out that the “I” was for intoxicated, not drunk. Sean probably couldn’t even say the word “intoxicated”, at this point.

They towed the car to Lilah’s house and started to untie the Geo. Lilah came out the front door in a ratty sweater, pajama pants, and slippers, mad as hell about being woken up. “What the fuck, Sean?” she shouted. 

“Listen, Sis, it’s just for the night,” Sean stammered.

“Well, you can’t leave that piece of shit on the street,” Lilah said, “you need to push it into the driveway or else every Karen on the block will be calling me. But I want this thing gone by tomorrow!”

As Mitch drove Sean home, he started to tell Sean all about the weird voicemails. He pulled out his phone and was shocked to find that there were about twenty more. He handed the phone to Sean, who put the phone on speaker as they listened to the voicemails. Two were from the same angry woman, yelling and cursing at “Nick”. 

“Dude, she’s pissed,” Sean laughed. 

The rest of the voicemails were similarly strange, but it was the last one that caught their attention. “Mitch, it’s Nana. I’m having trouble finding my pills, can you help me?”

“Hasn’t your grandma been dead for, like, a year?” Sean asked.

“Yeah, thanks for the reminder,” Mitch retorted, “Damn scammers!” They drove in silence for a while, then Mitch realized, “Hey, how are you going to get your car tomorrow? You probably should have stayed at Lilah’s.” 

“No way,” Sean answered, “her boyfriend hates me. He threatened to break my jaw, last time I crashed there.” Mitch sighed as he headed towards home. At least he’d have some company tonight. 

The next morning, Sean was energetic and excited. “Hey,” he said, “I think we should mess with those scammers!” 

Mitch looked at his phone and saw that his voicemail was full. “We should,” he replied as he put the phone on speaker and hit the first number, “I don’t have anything better to do today. Let’s mess with those sons-of-bitches!”

He heard a familiar tone, and a message saying that the number had been disconnected. He hit the second number, and got the same message. By the fifth number, Sean had a better idea.

“Let’s try the angry chick. She is still calling.”

 Mitch scrolled up and hit the number. The woman’s tired voice answered,

‘Nick? Where are you? Please, my head hurts. I’m dying. Don’t leave me here…”.

Mitch hung up before she could say more and looked at Sean. 

“That’s some fucked-up shit,” Sean said, shaking his head, “who the hell is Nick?” 

“I don’t know, but I need to eat before I deal with this,” Mitch said shakily, “she’s probably just having a bad trip.”

Mitch put out two bowls and a box of cereal, and they ate in silence. Something about the woman’s voice was haunting. “Dude, for some reason, I can’t ignore that one.” Mitch finally said, “What if she’s in real trouble?” 

“I know,” said Sean with his mouth full. “We need to check this out. Hey,” he said, swallowing, “what if we used that Reverse White Pages and search your number? Maybe Nick was the last owner?”

Mitch pushed aside the mess on the table and moved next to Sean. Sean pulled up the app on his phone and typed in Mitch’s number. The results filled the page, but the top one was “Nicholas Elwood” with an address. “Parkview, not too far away,” Mitch noted. They put “Nicholas Elwood” into Google search but found nothing more than the address, which they already knew. “Try ‘Nick’ instead of ‘Nicholas’,” Mitch suggested. Still nothing new. 

“He probably hasn’t had his new number long enough for it to be listed,” Sean commented. “That phone number sure did turn over a lot, I wonder why?”

“Probably got tired of the scammers,” Mitch replied.

Suddenly they were both reminded of the mission for the day. “Let’s call some of those people and see it we can come up with any clues.”

They found the third person on the list in Google, along with a new number. Mitch dialed it and the phone only rang once before it was answered. Before Mitch could speak, an angry voice yelled, “Fucking scammers! How did you find me? Leave me alone!”

“That went well,” muttered Mitch, “he recognized my number. Let’s use your phone, next time.” 

They read the list of former owners again. “Hey, this name, Butch Lincoln,” said Sean, “wasn’t one of the messages for a Butch?” They used Google again and found a number.

An older man answered, this time, “Hullo?”. 

“My name is Mitch, and I just got a new phone with your old number. I’ve been getting a lot of weird voicemails, and I was wondering if you knew why?” Mitch waited a minute. Had the man hung up?”

“Spirit Wireless?” Butch finally said, “That seems about right. Have you tried calling any of them back?”

“Yes, mostly disconnected numbers.”

“Yep. Has anyone called for you, yet?”

“Just someone acting like she was my grandma, but she’s been dead over a year.” Mitch waited for the man to respond, but he didn’t, so he continued, “I figured they were scammers, so my friend and I thought we would mess with them.” It sounded foolish when he said it to a stranger.

“Just one call from someone dead, so far, hmm? Listen, what city do you live in?”

“Hendrickson.”

“Me too. Meet me at The Red Rooster at 10:30. I’d love to tell you more, just not over the phone. You buy the coffee.”

“Whoo hoo!” Sean yelled as Mitch handed him back the phone, “finally got some answers!”

When they got to the diner, it was almost empty. A family with three noisy kids, a group of teenagers, and an older man in a red faded flannel jacket. Sean jerked his head toward the man and they walked to his booth. The man had already started on his coffee. “Mitch?” he asked Sean, who pointed awkwardly to Mitch. ‘Well boys, you may as well sit down. I hope you are ready for this.” 

As they settled into their seats, the waitress came by and handed them menus. “We’ll just have some coffee, thanks,” Mitch told her.

“Dude, I wanted pancakes,” protested Sean, but Mitch looked at him,

“You got money?” 

Sean shook his head.

 “Two more coffees it is,” snapped the waitress. No big tip from this table, obviously.

The three of them sat and drank their coffees in silence until it became awkward. Finally, Mitch spoke, “You have something to tell me? About my phone?” he said tentatively.

Butch took another drink as though he didn’t want to answer. Finally, he took a deep breath and told his story in a soft voice.

“I hadn’t had that number ten minutes before the calls started. Same thing, asking for people I didn’t know. When I started getting the calls from people who claimed to be folks I knew, I started getting mad. My nephew. My cousin. My sister. All these people who are dead.”

“Damn scammers,” Sean interrupted. “Probably trolling the obituaries in the paper.”

“That’s what I thought, too,” Butch continued, “so when someone called claiming to be my best friend, Phil, I had had enough. Phil hadn’t been gone a week and I was still tore up about it, so it pissed me off. I decided I would mess with them. “‘Phil’,” he said with air-quotes, “said he needed a favor, and I said, “Sure, but I’d like to see you in person. Can we meet at the bar at Happy Hour? Just like old times?” I was chuckling when I hung up the phone, thinking I had gotten one over on them. I figured that was it, until I got a call from the same number later, at 4:30. The voice said, “Butch? I’ve been waiting here at Tony’s, but you ain’t shown up, yet.” He paused and looked at them. “Here’s the thing, boys—I only said ‘Meet me at the bar.’ I ain’t said nothing about it being called Tony’s.”

Butch started drinking his coffee again, obviously done talking while his story sank in. Finally, Sean spoke a little too loudly, “What the fuck…?” The mother of the family in the other booth gave his profanity a dirty look.

Butch chucked at Sean’s embarrassed look and continued. “So, I started thinking about those other calls. The voices were right, the names were right. It was like these people were right on the other end of the line. I took the phone back the next day, got my number changed, and haven’t heard anything since then.”

“Holy shit!” Sean said it quieter, this time. Then he looked at Mitch and said, “What about that lady?” Butch looked at them with a raised eyebrow. 

“There was this lady who called, last night,” Mitch started explaining, “Screaming at some guy named ‘Nick’. She called me three times.” Mitch whipped his phone out and started playing the messages. Butch listened soberly until they were done. “She was the only one we were able to call back,” Mitch said, “but she wasn’t yelling. She was asking for help. She said she was dying…”.

Butch drew a deep breath. “You find any information on this ‘Nick’ guy, the same way you found mine?” 

“Just an address,” Mitch answered. 

“Well, boys, it seems like someone is reaching out to you for help. You got more detective work than you planned for.” With that, he drained his cup and walked out of the diner.

“Dude,” Sean said, “we’ve got to find her, call her back, now!” Mitch’s trembling fingers hit the voicemail number again. It took a long time to be answered, and no voice came from the other end. Mitch started talking, anyway.

“Listen, I’m not Nick, but I think you need help. Where are you?” 

“Nick’s garage,” was all she managed to say. 

Sean hit Mitch’s arm a little too hard. “Dude, we have the address, let’s go!” 

“Don’t you think we should call the cops, first?” Mitch asked. 

“And say what? We’ve been getting calls from random dead people?”

They drove quickly to the address, and waited around a minute to be sure that no one was home. The garage was in an alley out back, and it was unlocked. They looked around before opening it and were relieved that it was almost empty. Then Mitch saw the rolled-up carpet in the back, and the pool of dried blood, then, finally, what looked like a bloody wig inside the carpet. “Call 911–now!”

“Tell me again how you found the body?” The Deputy asked after she had taken their information and called for the coroner. “We were just following up on a missed call, last night, for work,” Mitch explained lamely. “We found the garage open.”

“Well,” said the Deputy, “it obviously wasn’t from this lady. From the looks of things, she’s been dead two days, now. We’ll contact you if we need any further information. You are free to leave, for now, but don’t leave town. Well, I know you,” she pointed her pen at Sean, “can’t, because your Geo is still parked in your sister’s driveway.”

Mitch and Sean started to drive away when Sean said, “Stop. Hand me your phone.” Mitch gave it to him, and Sean got out and placed it under the front tire of Mitch’s truck. He got back in and said, 

“Go!”