The Dial Tone

Mona Higgins lived on Willow Crescent, in one of those neat little post-war houses where the hedges were clipped straight and the curtains were drawn at half-past six sharp. It was 1963, and her world moved to a clockwork rhythm: Her husband, George, left for work at the insurance office each morning at seven; she boiled the kettle at eight; the neighbour’s children shrieked on the way to school at quarter past.

The only disruption came from the telephone.

The Higgins household had only had the rotary phone for a year. George insisted on it, saying it was “modern” and “what everyone was doing.” Mona disliked it from the start. Too mechanical. Too cold. She missed popping down the lane to Mrs Fairburn’s to pass on a message, the warm chatter over a shared cup of tea. Now everything was voices through a wire, disembodied, brittle.

The first call came one Friday night.

It was a little past midnight when the shrill bell shattered the silence. Mona, startled from sleep, wrapped her housecoat around her shoulders and padded down the hall, muttering that it was probably one of the Fairburn boys messing about.

“Hello?” she said, lifting the receiver.

At first, there was nothing. Then, a hiss—low, restless, like a kettle left just before boil. Beneath it, faintly, a sound she recognised but could not place. It took her a moment before she realised: breathing.

“Who is this?”

No reply. Only a crackle, and what might have been a wet cough, swallowed by static. Then the line went dead with a sharp click.

She stood for a moment in the quiet hall, listening to her own heart thumping, before placing the receiver back. She told George about it in the morning, but he only laughed and accused her of having a “woman’s imagination.”

“It’s a party line,” he said. “Half the street’s on the same connection. Some poor soul left their receiver half-off, and you’re picking up the dregs. That’s all.”

But when the calls came again, always at twelve minutes past midnight, Mona stopped believing it was mere crossed wires.

By the third night, she’d begun to dread the sound. The phone shrieked, she lifted the receiver, and there it was—the static, the breathing, sometimes a faint whistle like wind through a crack.

Once, she thought she heard her own name. A faint whisper, drawn out as if from far away.

“Mona…”

She dropped the phone with a cry, the cord swinging.

The days that followed seemed stretched thin, every noise in the house suddenly amplified: the tick of the clock, the rattle of the milkman’s bottles, the clatter of George’s typewriter as he worked on his office reports in the dining room. The phone loomed in the hall like a patient animal waiting to pounce.

By the seventh night, the voice was clearer.

“Behind you.”

Mona spun round so quickly she nearly lost her balance. The hallway was empty, save for the umbrella stand and the framed photograph of the Queen that George insisted they hang.

George grew short-tempered. “It’s pranksters, Mona. Or your mind playing tricks. I’ll show you.”

That night, he insisted on answering the call himself. He sat in his dressing gown, pipe dangling from his lips, as the clock struck twelve.

The phone shrilled.

“See? Nothing to it.”

He lifted the receiver, smirk still fixed. But as he listened, the colour drained from his face. His jaw slackened. Slowly, he set the receiver down, staring past her as if something had left him hollow.

“What did you hear?” Mona whispered.

George said nothing. He simply stood, went back to bed, and turned his back to her.

The next day, George left for work at his usual time. He never returned.

His car was found abandoned by the roadside two miles from town, driver’s door ajar, keys still in the ignition. The police chalked it up to a disappearance, suggested he might have run off with a woman from the office. Mona insisted that was nonsense, but their clipped tones carried the weight of dismissal.

Nights grew longer. She stopped answering the door, stopped attending church. The neighbours whispered over their fences, some kindly, others sharp with suspicion.

Still, the phone rang.

“Mona.”

“Don’t turn.”

“She’s in the walls.”

The voice shifted in timbre, sometimes male, sometimes female, sometimes more than one at once, overlapping whispers pressed against her ears.

On the tenth night after George vanished, the voice changed.

“Come and see.”

The static deepened, a low roar like waves against a cliff. And then, beneath it, unmistakable: George’s voice.

Screaming.

Mona pressed the receiver tight, heart hammering.

“George? George, where are you?”

The sound was muffled, as though he were shouting through water. The phone crackled, groaned. For one terrible moment, she thought she could hear others with him—dozens of voices, chattering, sobbing, wailing like trapped birds.

Then silence.

The line cut dead.

The phone rang again the next night.

This time, she didn’t hesitate.

“Where is he?” she demanded.

The voice came, clearer than ever:

“He answered. Now he’s here.”

And then, faint in the background, George’s voice again—hoarse, broken, calling her name.

She dropped the phone, clapping her hands to her ears, but the sound kept going. It wasn’t coming from the receiver anymore.

It was coming from the walls.

Mona pressed herself against the hallway wall, the phone swinging gently from its cord, the receiver clicking against the wall.

The voices hadn’t stopped. They travelled through the plaster, through the skirting boards, murmurs layered upon murmurs, as if the very house itself had begun to breathe.

She fled to the kitchen, clutching her rosary. For a moment, silence. Just the tick of the clock, the faint hum of the refrigerator. She almost laughed at herself.

And then—

The phone rang again.

It rang even though the receiver still dangled from the hall stand.

Slowly, trembling, Mona lifted it back to her ear.

Static. A long, rattling sigh. Then George’s voice, clearer than ever.

“Mona, listen to me. I made a mistake.”

She clutched the phone so tightly her knuckles went white. “George? Where are you? What happened to you?”

“You mustn’t answer again,” he said. His words were urgent, broken by static. “Every call… it’s not a wrong number. It’s them. They’re waiting for someone to pick up.”

“Who’s they?” she whispered.

There was a pause. A chorus of faint, ragged voices swelled behind him, as if dozens of mouths pressed close to the line.

“The ones before us,” George said. “They only need you to answer.”

The line clicked.

Silence.

Mona stood rigid in the hallway, the heavy receiver pressed to her ear. Slowly, she replaced it on the cradle.

For the first time in nights, the phone stayed quiet.

She almost allowed herself to breathe.

The next morning, the postman found the Higgins house oddly still. Curtains drawn, front door ajar. Inside, the kettle hissed on the stove, untouched.

The telephone sat on its table in the hallway, receiver perfectly in place.

But when he passed, the postman frowned.

For just a moment—just enough to freeze him in his tracks—he swore he heard a sound coming from the receiver.

A woman’s voice, faint but insistent.

“Hello? Is anyone there? Please—someone pick up—”