Lost Phone Part 7

Lost Phone Part 7

Thursday, December 17th, 2009 – 7:40am

(Mark– 44-year-old Police Detective)

I sat in the living room, surrounded by the familiar comforts that somehow failed to soothe me now. The room was dim, illuminated only by the faint morning light filtering through half-closed blinds. Shadows stretched lazily across old beige walls, the paint faded and cracked in spots, a testament to years of neglect. Bookshelves lined with worn detective novels and crime thrillers flanked the walls, each story read countless times, each spine creased and softened by age. The furniture was outdated, mismatched—a sagging brown leather couch here, a threadbare armchair there, stained coffee table cluttered with ashtrays and half-empty whiskey glasses.

The cigar burned low between my fingers, the embers glowing weakly, casting flickering shadows across my tired face. Smoke curled upward in lazy spirals, dispersing into the air like my troubled thoughts. My eyes fixed emptily on the fireplace, dark and cold now, ashes from last night's fire piled loosely inside.

I exhaled slowly, feeling the weight of exhaustion pressing heavily on my chest. An hour had crawled by since Abigail had been rushed to the ER, her battered body a testament to horrors I couldn't fully comprehend. Her desperate words replayed in my mind like a broken record—her insistence that a phone, of all things, was somehow responsible for her condition. It was absurd, impossible. Yet the terror in her eyes had been undeniably real.

I rubbed a hand roughly over my face, the scratch of stubble reminding me how long it had been since I'd truly rested. Abigail's behavior had spiraled rapidly in the past few days, her grip on reality fraying at the edges. Losing her brother Daniel had shattered something deep inside her, leaving wounds that went far beyond the physical. Maybe it had all finally caught up to her—the grief, the guilt, the relentless pressure of her job.

I stubbed out the last of my cigar, watching the embers fade and die, wondering helplessly what the hell I was supposed to do now.


It wasn't the first time someone got broken from this kind of work, especially the ambitious ones. Yet her quick change of her behavior was too weird to understand. Papers were strewn across my desk—reports, statements, medical files, timelines—all screaming at me to find some kind of pattern. Some kind of truth.

My eyes kept drifting back to the folder stamped "NORA NORRIS - Ongoing." Her photo clipped to the first page stared up at me. A kid, barely started living, now trapped in a coma nobody could explain. And somehow, somehow, Abigail Carter had managed to wedge herself so deeply into this mess it felt impossible to separate her from it.

At first, I wanted to believe her. Hell, I needed to. Abigail wasn't just another detective; she was solid, driven, one of the few who hadn't let this damned city grind her down. But something changed after her brother died. And tonight, sitting in the suffocating silence of my office, I couldn't ignore it anymore.

I leaned forward, elbows digging into the desk, and pulled up the security footage again. The one Abigail had shown me days ago. 6:14 AM. A brief glitch, static on the screen, and then—poof—the phone was gone from the evidence locker. Just like that. No one in, no one out. An impossible disappearance, or so she claimed.

But it gnawed at me. It gnawed at me hard enough that earlier today, I made a quiet request for the raw footage from that night—straight from the server. No middleman. No edits. No room for "technical difficulties."

The feed they sent me was clear. Clean. No static. No glitch.

Instead, there she was.

Abigail. Clear as day, walking into the evidence room at 6:14 AM. She didn't rush. She didn't sneak. She went straight to Locker 17, typed in the code without hesitation, retrieved the phone, and walked out.

Twenty-six seconds.

I watched it over and over until the image burned into the back of my skull. Abigail. The same woman who stood in this office and swore to my face that it was "something else." Swore that "no human" could have taken it.

Yet here she was.

And it meant only one thing: she lied.She tampered with the footage before showing it to me. She wanted me to see what she wanted me to see. Which meant she had access. She had motive. She had...

No. That was the problem. Motive. Why? What the hell did Abigail have to gain from spinning some elaborate web of paranormal horseshit? Setting herself up as a victim? Risking her badge, her reputation, everything she'd built, for... what?

I leaned back, scrubbing my hands over my face, feeling the day-old stubble rasp against my palms. Maybe it was the grief. Daniel’s death had gutted her, and people break in all kinds of ugly ways when they lose someone that close. Maybe she'd cracked, lost her grip on reality, and was pulling us all into her private hell.

Maybe.

I muttered under my breath, "the cracks were always there. And we just didn't want to see them."

If Abigail was compromised—if she was unstable—then this entire investigation was tainted. Every report she touched. Every statement she made. Every "fact" she insisted was true.

And now she is hospitalized, brutally assaulted.

The cursed phone. The hallucinations. The blood. The disappearances.

"None of it makes sense," I said to the empty room, my voice low, tired. "None of it."

Unless Abigail wasn't just another detective caught in the crossfire.

Unless she was part of it from the beginning.

I grabbed my coat and left the apartment, locking the door behind me without a second thought. The winter air slapped me in the face, sharp and biting, but I barely felt it. I needed answers.

The hospital loomed ahead, its sterile white lights piercing the early morning gloom. I stayed outside for a moment, lighting another cigar with trembling hands. The smoke filled my lungs. I leaned against a cold steel pillar, the rough texture biting into my jacket.

No matter what happened, Abigail was still my partner on this case. Regardless of how absurd her behavior had become, she had also been assaulted... badly. Someone, or something, had put her life in danger. I didn't know how or why yet, but I couldn't turn my back on her. She deserved better than suspicion—she deserved the benefit of the doubt.

The phone played a role. I couldn't deny that anymore. It sat at the center of everything, a malignant thread tying Nora, Lars, and now Abigail together. I needed to connect the dots.

I finished the cigar, crushing it under my boot, and squared my shoulders.

I walked into the hospital, the fluorescent lights humming overhead, the sharp scent of disinfectant curling in my nose. My boots echoed softly against the linoleum floors as I made my way toward the elevators.

I was heading to Nora's room.

The first victim.

Whatever this was, it started with her.
As I approached Nora's room, I slowed my pace. Something—a movement—caught my eye a few meters ahead. I narrowed my gaze and saw a figure, frail but determined, slipping through the corridor toward Nora's door. A female patient, walking slow and steady, trying to mask the limp that betrayed her pain.

I froze, heart hammering.

It was Abigail.

My gut clenched. Confusion roared through my mind, battling against instinct. She shouldn't even be out of bed, let alone wandering the halls. I quickened my pace, boots thudding against the floor, following her into the room.

She was there. It was really her. Abigail, standing over Nora’s bed, her hand clutching that stupid, cursed phone like it was some kind of relic. My mouth opened, ready to call out to her—ready to stop her—when it happened.

The shadows poured out from the phone, thick and writhing, crawling up the bed, engulfing the still form of Nora. My body locked in place, paralyzed by the sheer wrongness of it, by the terror clawing at my mind.

Abigail dropped the phone onto the bed and collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

The shadow erupted, no longer a lazy slither but a violent surge, coiling and snapping like some furious beast freed from its chains.

I didn’t think.

I ran forward, grabbed the phone off the bed, feeling the searing heat bite into my palms. Without a second of hesitation, I bolted from the room, sharp, desperate movements pulling me away from the nightmare I could hardly comprehend.

As soon as I crossed the threshold, the shadows—all of them—sucked violently back into the phone. The air popped with a sickening, deafening silence.

The phone grew hotter in my hands. Pain prickled, then bit savagely into my skin. I could smell it—the acrid, sickly stench of burning flesh. Yet the true pain hadn't even kicked in yet; only the instinct to survive pushed me forward.

My ears started buzzing, a shrill, maddening sound that drowned out everything else. I didn't slow down. I tore through the corridor, slammed through the emergency exit door, bolted down the stairwell, jolting two, three steps at a time.

The phone burned hotter, scalding my palms, but I didn’t—couldn’t—let it go.

When I finally burst through the hospital's side exit, the freezing air slapped me so hard I gasped. I stumbled into the snow-covered parking lot, desperate, delirious. My whole body screamed in agony.

I dropped the phone onto the icy ground.

The snow around it didn’t melt.

I stared at it, panting, sweat freezing against my temples, while the white flickering light pulsed from the cracked screen, rhythmic and mocking.

I looked down at my hands. Torn apart. Burnt raw. The skin blistered and blackened, blood seeping from cracks that shouldn’t even be there.

The buzzing in my ears grew louder, an endless, hellish hum that made my head swim.

I clenched my teeth, hard enough to taste blood.

I was confused. Terrified. Exhausted.

I was trying to catch my breath, doubled over in the freezing air, when a voice—old, frail—cut through the haze.

"I will take care of it now," the voice said.

I snapped my head up, heart hammering anew. An old man stood a few feet away, maybe in his mid-80s, stooped yet deliberate. He moved slowly toward the phone lying in the snow, as if each step was measured against some invisible burden. Without hesitation, he knelt, wrapped the cursed thing in a worn cloth, and placed it carefully into a small, rusted metal box.

"Who are you? What are you doing?" I barked, my voice harsher than I intended.

The old man looked at me with pale, sunken eyes that carried a weight I couldn’t comprehend. "If you really want to know," he rasped, "let's discuss elsewhere. It’s freezing cold."

I hesitated, confusion and exhaustion battling inside me. But curiosity won. I nodded and followed him.

He wasn't dressed for the cold—just a thin T-shirt and loose pants—yet he didn’t seem to feel the winter’s bite. His pace was slow, his breath shallow, but his steps were unwavering. We walked in silence for several minutes, the snow crunching under our boots, until we reached a crumbling apartment building a few blocks from the hospital.

He led me up four flights of narrow stairs. His apartment was almost bare—a simple bed, a small table with two chairs, and a battered suitcase lying open on the floor, its contents neatly arranged. It looked like he’d only just arrived, or maybe he never intended to stay long.

He motioned for me to sit and busied himself preparing some tea. I sank into one of the creaking chairs, still rubbing the raw burns on my hands.

"Who are you?" I asked, unsure why.

He smiled faintly, a sad, brittle thing. "An old fool," he said. "My name… isn't important. Since my life the last 44 years was a torment for my sins."

"You don't make any sense," I muttered, anger bubbling up. "What is going on? What is this stupid phone?" I almost shouted.

The old man handed me a steaming cup of tea, his hands steady despite the tremor in his voice. "I understand your frustration. I will try to explain in the best way my age allows me."

He shuffled to the window, staring out toward the hospital, his voice growing distant and heavy as he spoke.

"About 50 years ago, me and six colleagues were working—experimenting, really—on the minds of the mentally ill in state asylums. You are familiar with the old methods, yes? Harsh. Cruel. We thought we could do better. We believed we could isolate the sickness inside the mind... and remove it."

"We split into teams, visited the worst asylums. Convicted criminals—murderers, rapists—patients whose crimes were blamed on madness. We had our successes. Our failures. But we needed a breakthrough. A specimen to prove our research was the future."

He took a sip of his tea, his eyes not leaving the window.

"And then we found him. A man—more beast than human—raving about voices, about a demon called Molech. Claiming he was commanded to commit atrocities—murdering children, women—without a shred of guilt."

My blood ran cold as the old man continued.

"We thought him perfect. No pity. No remorse. No morality to muddy the waters. We experimented. We pushed boundaries that should never have been crossed."

He paused, gathering himself.

"One day, I had an idea. If we could trigger his delusions—heighten his paranoia—we might isolate it more easily. We staged a false exorcism. Religious props, chanting, the whole charade. He responded immediately—screaming, cursing, speaking gibberish—and when the moment was right, we powered up our machine.

And we trapped… something.

"We called it the Q-Box. A crude device, no larger than a radio. It pulsed with an unnatural light. We thought we had isolated his madness."

The old man's hands tightened around his cup.

"The next morning, he was found dead in his cell. Peaceful. As if... whatever drove him was gone."

He turned to face me, his face a mask of old, bitter regret.

"Our funding collapsed. Our careers were over. We abandoned the project. But the Q-Box remained—taken by our leader, our sponsor."

His voice dropped to a whisper.

"It wasn't long before he started to lose his mind. Claimed the box spoke to him. That shadows moved when he slept. We thought he was mad with disappointment."

A long silence stretched between us.

"Until he was found—torn apart—along with his wife and children."

I swallowed hard, bile rising in my throat.

"We tried to destroy it," the old man said. "But we realized—too late—that destroying the Q-Box would unleash what was inside. The entity needed to be contained, watched. Richard and I took up the burden. The others fled, cowards all."

He sighed, a sound full of the weight of decades.

"We kept it locked away for forty-four years. When the old device began to fail, we transferred it—with great difficulty—into newer technology. A cell phone."

The old man glanced at the box containing the cursed device.

"Two years ago, Richard began to lose his grip. Isolation. Guilt. Fear. They gnawed at him. He cracked. He took the phone… and left."

"Later, I read he had committed suicide. Then came the news about Nora... then Lars... and now, here we are."

He turned his hollow gaze to me, as if expecting—or daring—me to understand.

"We thought we were saving humanity," he whispered. "Instead... we unleashed hell."

I sat there, the cup of tea cooling in my hands, the taste of fear thick in my mouth.

Breaking the heavy silence, I asked, "What was that cloth and box you used before, to collect the phone?"

The old man, still standing by the window, shrugged slightly. "Nothing special. Just a cloth and a box, blessed by a priest."

I blinked at him, confused. "So you mean..."

"I mean nothing," the old man said abruptly, his voice sharp enough to cut. "If we have to deal with a demon thing, then perhaps the opposite will help us."

I nodded slowly. "What do we do now?"

"Nothing," the old man replied, without hesitation. "I shared with you everything I know. Now you can leave me be. I will take care of it."

"How?" I asked, suspicion threading my voice.

"Not your concern," he said, turning back from the window to face me fully. "Just trust in me. Not you, nor anyone else will have to deal with it. I promise you."

There was a certainty in his voice that chilled me, but also a strange kind of peace. Like a man who had long ago accepted the weight of damnation.

"Okay," I said finally, my voice low. "I have to go then... Thank you, sir..."

"My name is of no importance," the old man replied softly. "Go now. Take care of your friend."

I stood up slowly, feeling the full weight of exhaustion pressing down on me. Without another word, I walked out of his apartment, the door clicking shut behind me with a finality that echoed in my bones.

I returned back to the hospital. The fluorescent lights buzzed faintly overhead as I made my way through the sterile corridors. I needed to check on Abigail.

I found her doctor first, a tired man in a white coat who offered a professional, guarded smile. "She's stable," he said. "She just needs rest."

Relief washed over me, heavy and bittersweet. She was safe. For now.

Then I asked about Nora.

The doctor hesitated, frowning slightly as if the question was strange. "Nora Norris? She woke up early this morning. Perfectly healthy. She already left with her family."

The words hit me harder than I expected. I stood there for a moment, processing it. Nora’s sudden recovery—after all she had endured—was miraculous. Of course I was pleased. Overjoyed even. But there was a nagging feeling deep in my gut.

Wasn't it too fast?

Should I pay them a visit? No. No, it was enough. I was too tired to start chasing shadows again.

Right now, Abigail needed me more.

She wasn't crazy. She had been manipulated, toyed with, tormented by something she could never have fought alone. Demons... the word echoed in my mind with a bitterness that tasted like iron.

Demons exist.

And if they exist, then what else?

I stepped outside into the snow, lit another cigar with shaking hands, and watched the white flakes drift down from the heavy sky. It was too much to comprehend. Too much for one exhausted mind to process.

I finished the cigar in silence, the smoke mixing with the cold air, then turned and made my way back to my apartment.

I needed sleep.