Quarter to Midnight: Fifteen Horror Short Stories Read online

  A headache set in to my right temple as I tried to calculate how long that would give me. It was just after five in the morning. Surely dawn isn’t far away.

  I remembered a quote, something I’d read in a novel years before, which suddenly felt much more personal. The game of patience has changed into a game of endurance.

  There was nothing to do but wait and hope. I kicked against the ground again, setting my chair back to rocking.

  I divided my attention. I still watched the mannequin, but I couldn’t stop myself from flicking my eyes towards the window above my head. I kept expecting the fresh morning light to break through the black, but if anything, it seemed to be getting darker. I struggled against my desire to check the time. Taking the light off the mannequin for even a second would give him the freedom he craved, but the slow crawl of time was agony. When my limbs were trembling from exhaustion and cold and my eyes were bleary from staring into the dim light, I couldn’t stand it any longer.

  I flipped the phone around to face myself, then immediately turned it back on the mannequin. He’d taken another long step forward, halving the distance between us. I recoiled in my chair, and the pained squeals of its dry wood filled the basement.

  I’d seen two important things in the moment I’d been able to look at my phone.

  First, it was five forty-two in the morning. I couldn’t remember what time dawn broke, but I suspected it wasn’t long after six. Second, and much more horrifying, my phone’s battery was down to the last two percent.

  As I held the shaking light towards the mannequin’s face, I thought his thin, stern lips looked a little different. Maybe it was the exhaustion or the stress getting to me, but they seemed to have curled into a grim smile.

  “No,” I said, using both hands to hold the light, to stop my numb fingers from dropping it. “No, don’t come any closer. Don’t come any closer. Don’t come any closer.”

  I kept the chant up, gasping thin breaths in between and stealing frequent, quick glances at the window, desperate to see any sort of abatement in the smothering darkness. The mannequin, ever still, ever patient, watched me with those intense, eager eyes. I met his gaze, shook my head… and then my light died.

  “Here it is,” Geoff said, huffing as he unlocked the basement door. “I haven’t touched anything since I got back.”

  Tony followed the wheezing man into the basement, taking in the surroundings in a quick glance. He recognised his friend’s jacket and shirts hanging on a coatrack as well as the backpack sitting by the door.

  “He didn’t take anything?” Tony asked, crossing the room and glancing at the unmade mattress on the floor.

  “Not that I can tell,” Geoff said, rubbing the back of his hand across his forehead. “Weirdest thing. He cleared out while I was visiting my sister. Didn’t write a note or anything. He left the key at the foot of the stairs, though.”

  Tony stooped to pick up the phone that had been left on the rocking chair. He pressed the power button, but the battery was dead. “Well, if you hear from him, tell him to get in touch with me. Tell him I’m worried, and his professors say he’ll fail if he misses any more classes.”

  Geoff nodded grimly. “D’you want to take his stuff?”

  “I guess I’d better.”

  Tony grabbed the clothes and phone, stuffed them into the backpack, then followed Geoff towards the stairs. At the threshold of the room, he glanced back, searching for any sign of where or why his friend had disappeared. He saw nothing except the unmade mattress on the floor, the stacks of boxes pushed against the walls, the dilapidated rocking chair sitting under the grimy window, and two slate-grey ceramic mannequins standing against the back wall.

  DEAD CALL

  5:08pm, Friday the 28th

  Hey, guys, can I get some advice? I’ve been receiving a lot of dead calls lately. You know the type—you answer the phone, and there’s complete silence on the other end. No matter how many times I say, “Hello? Hello?” they won’t speak. Eventually, I hang up in frustration.

  At first, I thought they were prank calls, but this is the third day, and they won’t. Stop. Calling. It’s happening fifteen, maybe sixteen, times a day. Sometimes, I’ll get a clump of them together—five or six within an hour—then they’ll space out to one every couple of hours. To be frank, I’m going crazy. Anyone had this happen before?

  11:35pm, Friday the 28th

  Thanks for all the messages. To answer the most common questions: yes, it’s a private number, and no, I can’t hear any giggling or breathing on the other end. It’s just complete silence. From what you guys are saying, it’s probably a machine dialling me from a call center, but I don’t know why I never get a human on the other end. I actually yelled at them last time they called, so hopefully that will shut them up.

  9:42am, Saturday the 29th

  Quick update: they called nine times last night. Nine. F***ing. Times. I set my mobile to silent before I went to bed, but it recorded the messages. They never hung up, just let the voicemail run until it was out of memory, so now I’ve got an hour and a half of messages filled with complete silence.

  Fun way to start the weekend, huh??

  10:11am, Saturday the 29th

  No, unfortunately I can’t just ditch my phone. I don’t have a landline, so this is the only way my friends and family can contact me.

  Thanks for the suggestion to do a redial. I’ll try that now.

  10:18am, Saturday the 29th

  K, tried redialling. Honestly, I don’t know what I expected, but I just got a lot more of the same. They answered after one ring, but I couldn’t hear anything. I’ve tried calling a few times, even hung on the phone for a couple of minutes at one point. Nada.

  Any other suggestions?

  1:55pm, Saturday the 29th

  So. They’re still calling. I’m ignoring them for now and letting the phone ring out. That’s not what I’m updating about, though.

  I played through a couple of the voicemails from last night while I ate my lunch. I figured I’d better, just to make sure there was nothing in them.

  Now, I’m not superstitious or easily scared. I’ve gone on ghost tours and can watch horror movies without a problem. But, honestly, those recordings freaked me out. I can’t explain it well enough, but I really started to feel like someone was on the other end. It’s the strangest, most inexplicably skin-chilling thing I’ve ever experienced.

  I’m going to take a walk to clear my head.

  3:31pm, Saturday the 29th

  Thanks for the many kind messages calling me a pansy. You’re such sweethearts.

  I downloaded the first couple of messages onto my computer so I could get a better audio quality. Just in case, y’know? Well, when I adjust some of the levels, there IS something there. It’s not much, and it fluctuates in an out, but it sounds sort of… echo-y. Like the message came from a really big, really empty room. I’m going to keep looking.

  3:38pm, Saturday the 29th

  I downloaded the rest of the messages. Most are empty except for that echo, but one had a patch of actual noise. It lasts for about fifteen seconds and sounds like someone scratching their fingernails over fabric. That’s the best I can describe it.

  The phone’s still ringing, by the way. I’ve had twelve calls since I got up. I’m not answering them.

  4:03pm, Saturday the 29th

  I uploaded the audio clip like you guys asked. You can hear the sound start at around 00:08 and last until 00:21. It’s the only of its type I got out of the messages last night. I let the clip run for another minute so you can hear the echo-y noise, too.

  Honestly, I don’t care who’s doing it or why. I just want it to stop. You don’t know what it’s like hearing that blasted ringtone every hour. I’ve turned my phone to silent a few times, but I don’t want to keep it off for too long in case my family or work needs to contact me.

  Help?

  7:55pm, Saturday the 29th

  Paul—because it’s a private num
ber, my phone company won’t give me any details on who owns it.

  Tory135—I tried following your instructions on blocking the number, but it didn’t work. They called again barely ten minutes after I’d finished. Maybe it only works on certain phone models?

  HJVerve–any help you can give would be greatly appreciated. Yes, my phone contract is with [REDACTED].

  9:15am, Sunday the 30th

  Great news, guys. One of the members here (not going to say names so he doesn’t get in trouble) has a brother who works at my phone provider. He bent a few rules and was able to get me the number that’s been calling me. I’m off to do some research now. If I can figure out who they are, I should be able to contact them and make them stop.

  4:41pm, Sunday the 30th

  I’m leaving this here in case you guys can make any more sense of it than I could.

  Once I matched the phone number to an address, it was easy to find information about them online. Really easy, actually. It’s been all over the news.

  Here’s a link to one of the articles. The day it occurred is the same day I started getting the calls. I don’t know what to think… except that it’s time to get a new phone.

  Copied from the Harob Weekly:

  SUBURBAN HORROR by Natalie Mur

  At 2 a.m. on Wednesday the 26th March, a sinkhole appeared in Jacaranda Street in North Harob. The sinkhole, approximately thirty-two meters across, occurred directly under the home of publicist Georgina Grey.

  In a statement issued by the Harob police, Inspector Patterson said: “The entirety of the Grey home, plus part of the adjacent property, collapsed into the sinkhole. It is believed that Mrs Grey and her two children were inside the home at the time of the event. Attempts to retrieve them have so far not yielded results.”

  Police searches have been hindered by the depth of the sinkhole, which is estimated to extend at least ninety meters. According to Inspector Patterson, the chances of any of the Grey household having survived is “slim to none,” though police are continuing their efforts.

  LUCY

  This happened a couple of years back, but it’s not the sort of thing I could forget easily. I was driving to visit my hospitalised mother, who’d suffered complications following a hip surgery. She lived across the country, so it was virtually a full day spent in the car. The weather was foul. A strong wind forced the rain nearly horizontally across the road. Thought it was only mid-afternoon, the streetlamps had come on in the absence of sunlight, but the weak circles of illumination did little to clarify the road.

  Normally, I’d have taken a lunch break at Dorchester, but the traffic had slowed to nearly half its speed due to the bad visibility, and I figured it would be smart to stop early and hope the clouds broke up before the second stretch of my trip.

  I took a turnoff marked West Harob. The road narrowed quickly, and scrubby trees crowded up to the edge of the asphalt. I leaned forward in my seat, squinting to make out the white stripes indicating the centre of the road. Fog was rising out of the ditches either side of my car, spilling onto the street and clinging to the tree trunks. For a moment, I worried I might have taken a road to nowhere. Then the trees thinned, and I began to see a handful of houses–many made out of wood, though a few were brick–sitting on the hills that overlooked the road.

  I didn’t see a single car for the entire drive. In fact, I didn’t see any signs of life at all until I reached what had to be the city centre, where a bundle of buildings were arranged haphazardly into a strip mall.

  The pub’s parking lot was full. I supposed, if this were a farming town, the men wouldn’t have much to do during such a severe rainstorm. I passed a real estate office with boarded-up windows and spray-paint tags on its door. A group of squat houses broke up the shops, then a little farther on, I found a café.

  A few cars were parked out the front, and I drew my worn-out Chevy in as close to the door as I could get. Thunder rolled in the distance as I turned off the engine. I plucked my jacket off the passenger seat and opened my door.

  I moved as quickly as I could, but I was still drenched by the time I opened the diner’s door. It was a small place and was dirtier than I’d expected. One of the fluorescent lights flickered every few seconds, but it didn’t seem to bother the other occupants, who were mostly huddled at the back of the café and talking in low voices. I slipped into one of the tables close to the front window. The plastic tartan tablecloth crinkled as I rested my forearms on it, and the salt shaker was empty except for a few grains of rice. I picked up the menu and cringed at how tacky it felt.

  “What can I get you?”

  I turned to see a sallow-faced waitress hovering behind me. She forced a smile when I looked at her, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

  I scanned the menu for something that had a low chance of giving me food poisoning and settled on the burger. In a burst of genius, I added, “Can I get that to go?”

  The waitress didn’t reply, and I think I caught her scowling as she went through the double doors to the kitchen, but I didn’t care as long as I could get out of the diner and back into the familiar comfort of my car. Maybe it was the rain, or maybe it was because of how anxious I was about my mother, but the town gave me the creeps. I gazed out the window at the rain pounding on the hood of my Chevy. Like the real estate office, the squat two-story building on the other side of the road looked abandoned.

  The only person on the street was a girl running through the rain, going from door to door on some mysterious errand. Only a handful of buildings had lights on. I caught hints of the discussion at the table at the back of the room, but it sounded flat and vapid.

  The waitress dropped a Styrofoam clamshell box onto my table. “That’s eight fifty.”

  I wasn’t very reassured by how quickly the burger had been made, but I handed her a ten dollar note, took the box, and left the diner. I unlocked my car door, put the box on my dashboard, and was about to sink into the driver’s seat when I heard a voice calling.

  The wind and rain were ferociously loud, making it nearly impossible to catch the words, but the voice’s tone was urgent. I cautiously closed my car door and searched through the rain, shivering and cringing as the drops hit my face.

  Then I saw her—the little girl who’d been going door to door was dashing down the centre of the street, fighting to be heard over the drumming rain and thunder. I watched as she banged on a house door then set off running again when no one answered.

  I was getting drenched, but I couldn’t leave while the girl was obviously struggling to find help. I stepped forward and raised my hand to hail her. She saw and ran towards me.

  That’s when I finally got a good look at her. She couldn’t have been older than ten or eleven, and her simple white dress was discoloured with mud and oil. Shoulder-length brown curls hung wet and limp about her cheeks, and her eyes were bulging out of her pale face.

  “Help!” she called, her bare feet slapping the muddy asphalt as she ran. “Our car went off the road. My mum’s hurt. She’s hurt really bad. I can’t get her out.”

  I felt my heart stutter. The girl was close enough for me to see a trickle of red coming from her temple. The blood mixed with rain, which diluted it to paint a pale pink streak down her cheek.

  “Okay,” I said, looking about the street. It was empty. I turned back towards the diner and felt a flush of shock: the sallow-faced waitress stood at the door. She gazed at the girl for a moment, then looked at me, and raised her hand to the doorknob. I expected her to come out to see what the commotion was, but instead she turned the door’s lock then pulled a discoloured cloth curtain over the glass part of the door.

  Shocked, I blinked at the locked door unable to understand why the waitress would so pointedly refuse to help us. I turned back to the girl. Her eyes were fixed on mine, terrified and desperate, and I felt overwhelmingly underqualified to help.

  “Okay.” I gazed at my car, the café, then down the deserted street. “It’s going to be alright
. Can you show me the way?”

  She grasped my hand. Her fingers were cold from running through the freezing rain as she led me off the main road and down a lane. She ran flat-out while I jogged beside her.

  The rain had gotten through my jacket and soaked my shirt. I’d hoped the storm would ease during my stop, but if anything, the rain was getting heavier. I couldn’t see more than a dozen paces ahead, though the girl seemed to know where she was going. We came to the end of the street, and she led me down a narrow dirt path that ran between two brick houses. Behind the houses, an incline led into a wooded area. She let go of my hand then so that she could scramble up the slope with all four limbs. I glanced at my shoes–they were leather and only a few weeks old–and cringed. A run through the woods would ruin them. I glanced up and saw the girl waiting at for me at the edge of the woods. I took a gulp of air and clambered up the incline after her.

  She led me through the trees. The high branches caught the rain and poured it down on us in dribbles and splashes rather than drops. The wild, dark area had no clear paths and very little light. I nearly tripped over a root and cursed.

  “Please hurry,” the girl begged, barely pausing to look back at me. “She’s hurt bad. There’s so much blood.”

  Nausea grew in my stomach. If the mother was still alive–and I didn’t want to think about what would happen if she wasn’t–would I be able to carry her through the forest and back to the town? I wasn’t sure I would even be able to get her out of the car. I’d had some basic first-aid training at one of my previous jobs, but I didn’t have any medical supplies. I pulled my mobile out of my pocket and cursed when it showed no reception.

  The girl was able to weave through the woods faster than I could, and she quickly drew ahead of me. I tried to keep up, but the trees were close together, and I kept getting tangled in vines and bushes. “Slow down!” I called. “I don’t want to lose you!”