Scream and Scream Again!

  “She’ll be okay. As for the bloodstone, I just wanted her to have something to remember me after she lost the last one. And she said she’ll remember you, too. As it should be. It was your bloodstone, and you did decide to give it to her.”

  “Hey, wait a minute. If you wanted her to have my bloodstone, and Laura didn’t break its chain, was that you? It wasn’t me or Laura or Blake. Isn’t that against the rules?”

  Only silence answered me.

  “What about the chain, Larry? What was that?! Larry?!”

  When he didn’t reply, I gritted my teeth and looked back at my English book, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Laura and Larry.

  If I were Larry, I’d have broken that chain too.

  Area Code 666

  by Carter Wilson

  HER MOTHER’S TERROR-FILLED SCREAM CONSUMED Julia’s mind yet again.

  Every night, as she tried to sleep, the visions always ended the same: with her mother’s bone-piercing shriek of horror. All Julia could do was pray for sleep. She couldn’t help her mother. No one could, not anymore.

  Sleep came, but only after she had tossed and turned for more than an hour. When Julia woke the next morning, it took her a half second to remember today was a special day. Today was her birthday.

  Her dad gushed over her at breakfast and promised a surprise at night. Julia had to go to school, but that was okay, because all her friends were there, and her best friend, Syree, had even covered her locker door in birthday wrapping paper. Birthday cards and folded notes spilled out when she opened her locker, making Julia thankful for all the friends she had. Making things even better, by the end of the school day, Julia had almost no homework assigned, which was as common as a lunar eclipse.

  That evening at home, Julia’s father handed her a small box.

  “Happy twelfth birthday, sweetie.”

  The box was just the size and shape to contain what she hoped it did. Julia tore into the small box and pulled out the beautiful work of art.

  A phone.

  Finally, after two years of begging, her very own phone. It felt slick and dense in her hands, like a perfectly smooth chunk of white obsidian.

  This wasn’t her best birthday ever—that one was her ninth birthday, when her mother was still alive, and they had gone to Six Flags, where Julia had wedged herself between her parents on her first-ever roller-coaster ride.

  But this was still a great birthday. After gifts, Julia’s dad took her to Camparelli’s for dinner, where he teasingly pouted about her getting older as they shared an obscenely large sundae for dessert. At home they curled up on the couch and watched Psycho, a movie he was concerned would be too scary (though she’d already seen way worse on Netflix without him knowing).

  Finally, as bedtime neared, Julia disappeared into her room and started setting up her phone. The very first thing she wanted to do was text Syree, but her dad came in and reminded her to take the trash out before bed.

  “Sure, gimme a minute.”

  His voice deepened into his lecturing tone. “No, Julia, that’s the deal, remember? Your phone doesn’t start ruling things. It’s just a tool, nothing more. So please put it down and take the trash out, and just a couple minutes more with the phone, and then put it away for the night, okay?”

  Julia felt the pull of the phone, and already had a sense of its power of attraction. It felt comfortably warm as she placed it gently down on the nightstand.

  “Okay, Dad.”

  Minutes later she picked it back up and swiped her finger along the screen, unlocking it. Julia was surprised to see a message notification.

  Huh, Julia thought. No one even has my number yet.

  She didn’t recognize the sender’s number, and then realized it was probably Verizon welcoming her into the family. But then she saw the attachment, the slightly blurred, grainy photo, and knew immediately the message wasn’t from her phone company.

  There was only a one-word message that accompanied the photo.

  Julia.

  Just her name in the message field, nothing else.

  Julia held the phone closer to her face and squinted. She could make out the what of the image. What she couldn’t understand was the why of it.

  It was a doll. Specifically, the face of a doll, zoomed in so it only showed from the bottom of the nose up to the midforehead. It was an old-fashioned kind of doll, the creepy kind you’d find in a dark corner of your grandmother’s attic, dust-covered and alone. The doll in the photo had smooth, round cheeks, the skin glazed white as mountain snow. The nose was disproportionately tiny, with two darkened, functionless nostrils through which air never passed. And then there were the eyes.

  The eyes were the blurriest part of the photo, as if the doll had snapped awake midpicture. There was almost no color to them, just the faintest, lightest hint of blue—the color of a desert sky on a blistering hot day.

  No, Julia thought. The color of a ghost.

  A chill rolled inside her guts, lasting only a second but leaving icy discomfort in its wake.

  She looked again at the sender’s phone number, not even recognizing the area code: 666.

  What kind of area code is that? She’d have to Google it later.

  “So?”

  Julia jolted and saw her dad in the doorway.

  “How is it?” he asked.

  She looked up at him and immediately felt guilty, though she didn’t know why.

  “How’s what?”

  “The phone, what else?”

  “Oh, it’s great.” She pressed the home button on her screen, and the message disappeared. The last person she wanted seeing it was her father, who held out as long as he could in getting her a phone because of all his rants about privacy concerns. Some creep sending her a weird doll picture within minutes of setting up her phone was just the ammunition her dad needed to take her gift back.

  “Thank you again,” she added, smiling to hide her discomfort. “I really love it.”

  He came in and wrapped her arms around her, hugging her the extra-tight way that had been his habit ever since the accident. She wondered if he held her like this out of love or a need to protect her, but guessed it probably was a little of both.

  They were all each other had.

  “I can’t believe next year you’ll be a teenager.”

  “And I can’t believe you’ll be a fossil,” Julia said. “Where does the time go?”

  “Very funny.” He released her from his hug. “Let’s give the phone a rest and get ready for bed. School day tomorrow. Saturday you can sleep in all you want.”

  She didn’t want to put it away, but this wasn’t the time to protest. “Okay,” she said, then plugged the phone in next to her dresser. As she set it down, it felt hot to her. Hotter than just a minute ago.

  Julia went through her nightly routine: wash face, check for signs of impending pimples. Brush teeth, Waterpik braces. Change into her nightly sweatpants, the blue ones with the frayed ankles, the cotton so soft and perfect she dreaded the day she would inevitably outgrow them.

  Her nightly routine was always accompanied by music, streamed from her iPod to a small Bluetooth speaker on a shelf in the corner of her room. Upbeat music, fast tempo, happy lyrics. She needed this because at night, when she finally had to turn the music off and burrow under her covers, Julia was left with a smothering silence, a ripped heart, and a head full of black thoughts.

  It was always the same, no matter if she kept her bedroom light on or turned it off, whether she pulled the covers over her head or slept on top of them. She’d even tried sleeping with her head at the foot of the bed, but nothing made a difference.

  Nighttime was when she always saw her mother.

  Every night, the moment Julia closed her eyes, she saw her mother’s face. It always started as a memory of the actual last time she saw her, three years ago in the funeral home. Julia had never seen a dead body before, and her very first one was her own mother. Of course, at nine she was old enough to
understand that “dead” meant “never coming back,” but seeing her mother in the coffin, Julia couldn’t get the concept to stick in her brain. It was, literally, incomprehensible.

  In Julia’s nightly vision her mother always reanimated. She’d flash her eyes open, move her fingers around a bit, and then slowly, stiffly lumber out of the casket. Then she’d always spy Julia in that stuffy little viewing room and start asking questions.

  “What are we doing here?”

  “Why was I in that box?”

  “Why am I wearing my favorite red dress?”

  Julia would have to explain through her tears and a trembling voice how there had been a terrible accident. How a college student had been speeding and texting on his way to work and blew through a red light, the one on the corner near the Walgreens, less than a mile from their home. How he hit her mother’s car right on the driver’s side going fifty miles an hour.

  Every night, when Julia closed her eyes, she’d tell this vision of her mom how she had died in that accident, and the man who hit her had walked away with just a few scrapes and bruises.

  In her vision her mom never believed Julia. That is, until her mother started patting down her own body, feeling her skin and bones through the thin, silky fabric of her favorite red dress, only to discover parts of her were simply missing.

  Only then did her mom look back to Julia and begin to scream.

  This is how Julia fell asleep each night. Her mother, screaming for help, and Julia just standing there in that awful little, suffocating room, unable to do anything but stare at her in horror.

  Tonight, as Julia closed her eyes and steeled herself against the inevitable images that would pull her into the nightly void, she heard a sound. A small ding.

  It was the notification sound on her phone, which was faceup on the floor next to her bed. The little green notification light pulsed in the dark, a tiny little emergency beacon, summoning her.

  Julia leaned over and grabbed it, vaguely aware she was embarking on a new relationship with this device, one in which she would reach for it every time it called out to her, knowing it would control her, just as her friends’ phones all controlled them.

  She reached down and swiped the screen. Another text.

  Same 666 area code.

  Another photo.

  It was the doll’s face again, though this time the camera had pulled back a bit farther, revealing the doll’s long, ink-black hair, thick and wavy, a few strands resting haphazardly across the forehead. And it was a little girl—that was clear now. Little puffy lips, pursed and baby-like, red with a trace of painted lipstick that seemed just wrong for such a young thing. And the eyes. The ghost-blue eyes were now noticeably pointed just a bit off-center, as if looking at something just over Julia’s shoulder.

  Again, the message contained just one word. This time, it was:

  don’t

  Don’t what? Julia wondered.

  She held the phone at arm’s length, staring at this frozen girl, the one who seemed to have some kind of warning to give.

  Julia stared until the screen autodimmed and then faded to black, leaving her once again in the dark of her quiet room, vastly alone with only memories and questions, none of which would make sleep come fast or peacefully.

  Friday. The weekend couldn’t come soon enough.

  Julia showed off her new phone to her friends, who all seemed to approve. She and Syree traded numbers, marking Julia’s first contact in a list that would soon blossom with dozens of names, most of which would appear in daily messages and group chats, things which Julia would soon learn were just pointless half conversations and emoji art shows, all used as a means to distract from homework.

  She didn’t tell Syree about the two messages from 666.

  In study hall, however, Julia did sneak her phone out and check for new messages. None. Then, with the phone strategically placed beneath her desk at an angle where she could still read the screen, she Googled 666 area code.

  The first page of results told her more than she expected to learn.

  That number was no longer an area code, and hadn’t been in use for over ten years. It had once been the area code for the town of Reeves, Louisiana, but the folks there had it changed, since the number 666 was otherwise known as the “number of the beast.”

  Julia had never heard that term. New search.

  666 number of the beast

  Millions of results, the first of which was heavily biblical and confusing. Things about the Book of Revelation. Then she found a site that explained it in simple, stark detail.

  The beast is the Antichrist. The devil. He is known by his number, and that number is 666.

  Back to the search results. Most sites were all about the devil, but she did find one site about angels. Something about angel numbers and numerology, whatever that was. She tapped on the link.

  If you encounter the number 666, it is a good sign, despite the common lore. It means the Universe is reaching out to you, asking you to believe and trust in It. That magic is happening in your life RIGHT NOW.

  That definition of 666 is much better, Julia thought. She started reading more when an unpleasant voice jarred her.

  “Well, Julia, did you finally get a phone?”

  She looked up. Oh God. Mr. Hendrie.

  It was no use trying to hide the phone. She’d been busted.

  “Sorry, I’ll put it away.”

  He towered over her, and his enormous belly—barely contained inside an ugly, plaid, button-down shirt—rested way too close to her face. His meaty face was covered in black, wiry hairs that looked like thousands of spider legs, and currently this face held a dark scowl. Mr. Hendrie thrust his hand at her.

  “You’ll give it to me.”

  She slowly lifted the phone up to him and cringed as his chubby, sweat-glazed fingers snatched it from her. She hated the idea of his gross hands on it.

  “After class,” he said. And as he waddled back to the front of the room, Julia felt the judging gazes of twenty-five pairs of eyes, and her face flushed with heat. Knowing she was visibly turning red made it worse.

  A painfully slow forty-three more minutes passed until the bell rang, and Julia went to Mr. Hendrie to get her possession back. He gave her a brief lecture about the entire school system falling apart and then handed it back to her. She promised once again not to use it in class.

  When Julia was finally out of the classroom and in the crowded hallway, she turned the phone over and saw the blinking light. Julia swiped the screen, and there were two messages waiting for her.

  The first was from Syree: heard fat monster busted you

  She was going to write back when she saw the other message.

  It was from 666. Another photo.

  Julia walked over to a group of lockers and held the phone close to her face as she tapped on the photo. For a moment she was aware of the chaos around her, the swarm of middle schoolers racing to their next class, bodies bumping and jostling, lockers creaking open and slamming shut, shouts, laughter, shrieks, names shouted from one end to the other, and the rising heat from all those kids crammed into a narrow passage.

  But then everything slipped away when the photo opened. The only thing that existed in the world was on the four-inch screen in the palm of her hand.

  There was more of the doll this time. Some of the body. A little blue dress, the color of a robin’s egg, with a white lace collar. The doll’s hands were crossed neatly across her belly, her fingers clasped together, prim and proper. Julia could see just a bit of a dark, textured background behind the doll’s head.

  Again, just one word in the body of the message.

  forget

  Despite the heat from all the bodies in the crowded hallway, Julia felt cold. Cold as the ice she saw in the little girl’s distant gaze, that eternal stare that looked not so much like the doll had just woken, but rather that she was dead.

  Someone’s messing with me, Julia thought, and it’s not even the tin
iest bit funny. But that didn’t answer the one question she couldn’t figure out.

  How do they have my phone number?

  That night in bed, that same question rolled around in Julia’s head, and the moment she started to drift to sleep, her mind moved away from that question and back to where it always went at that hour.

  To the stifling little room at the funeral home.

  To the open casket with glossy wood paneling and gleaming brass side railings.

  To her mother’s face, so perfect and smooth, skin as unblemished as the doll’s.

  But tonight, for the first time, something was different. As her mother climbed from the casket, reaching out with long arms and bony fingers, demanding and pleading to know what had happened to her, there was something different.

  Her mother’s dress was not red this time. It was blue, the color of a robin’s egg, with a white lace collar.

  Saturday morning. Julia woke and looked down at her phone, which was plugged in and facedown on her bedroom carpet. She didn’t even want to check it, but she knew she would. She thought about the relief she would feel if there were no messages from 666, and she murmured a small wish for that very thing before looking.

  She turned it over. The light was blinking.

  “No.”

  She could choose not to swipe the screen and see what was waiting for her. She could just leave it on the floor and get on with her Saturday, happy in her ignorance. This is what she could do, but knew it wasn’t what she would do.

  As she feared, it was another message from 666.

  Another picture of the doll, same blue dress. Another view, slightly more zoomed out than the last one. This time the whole body of the doll was visible—at least it would be had there actually been a whole body. But this doll extended only to the tops of her legs. A few inches below the doll’s waist, there was nothing. No legs, no feet, not even the fabric of the dress. Everything just stopped on a fine edge, as if sliced off by the most precise and sharpest of surgical blades.

  Julia could also now see more of the background, which was clearly the base of a tree. The half doll was propped against the trunk, just where cracked and rough tree bark met a bed of fallen leaves on the ground. A final resting place.