Ring...
Ring...
‘Call from, NAME UNAVAILABLE’.
Ring...
‘Call from, NAME UNAVAILABLE’.
Ring...
‘Hello, please leave your message after the tone.’
Beep!
That was what Carly Gaines’ phone kept doing the morning of her mother’s funeral. The first time she heard it, Carly was sleeping off the brutal hangover that she chose to give herself the night before. The second time, she was waking herself up in the shower from said hangover. The third time, Carly was blow drying her hair, and the sound of the phone distracted her long enough to blow a nice stream of hot air into her face. “God damnit!” She shouted, before dropping the blow dryer. Her yell, followed by the sound of the heavy appliance crashing to the floor, led her brother Dave to come racing upstairs.
“Car?” He asked with concern. “Car, you alright?”
“Yes, I’m fine!” she said, annoyed, but cautious not to sound ungrateful for the concern. “I just dropped the damn hairdryer.”
“Ok, well if you need anything I’ll be downstairs.”
“Yes, ok thank you” she said, hurrying him away. She waited for the thumping of his footsteps to leave. However, before the words, are you still there, could leave her mouth she was once again interrupted by the sound of the phone.
Melissa Gaines did not have a good relationship with any of her 3 children.
There was her first born, Meghan. Next, her only son Dave. Last in the lineup was her daughter, Carly. Distance wise she was the closest to her mother. Communication wise she spoke to her the least. Melissa was a hard woman to be around and especially made it hard on her children. Most of it had to do with her dysfunctional, and unstable marriage to her husband, Daniel, father of her latter two children.
Meghan was the child of Melissa’s first husband, who left her three and half months before baby Meghan was born.
In a bizarre twist of fate, Melissa met Daniel the same day Meghan was born. She had a flat tire and Daniel, being the good Samaritan just so happened to stop his car and help the poor defenseless pregnant woman. As he was finishing up, Melissa’s water broke, and Daniel once again sprang into action, driving her to the hospital, where she gave birth to Meghan, only six days premature. They remained friends, and when Meghan was three, were married. A year and half later, they had Dave, and 2 years later, almost to the day, Carly was born to round out the perfect little family of five.
Daniel, a lineman for the county, was more focused on his job and sick mother to pay much attention to his own brood. This would often lead to an argument, and when Melissa’s kids were unfortunate enough to be in the line of fire, were her punching bags, both psychically and emotionally.
Meghan had a more forgiving personality, and willing to move on from the past with her mother, managed to keep a relationship with her. Dave and his mother had a much more rocky history. Though it had gotten better in later years, it went downhill when Dave was in High School (11th grade to be exact). Dave’s coming out to his mother was met with “It’s just a phase.” Despite her initial egregious reaction, Melissa later called her son, and told him she “didn’t care who he loved as long as he was in love and was loved by someone else.” This was enough for Dave to make amends with her, and the two would go on to become close.
Carly, unlike her elder two siblings, was not as forgiving towards their mother. What Melissa knew, but Carly was too in love to see, was that the man she was planning to spend the rest of her life with, was going to leave her for another woman only a year after they were married. Before that happened, however, Carly told her mother, “Don’t pretend like you actually care about me now!” followed by “I never want to speak to you again!” and slamming of the door on her way out.
Melissa attempted to reach out to her daughter, but Carly, perhaps either too proud or simply too embarrassed, never picked up the phone.
“She’s so much softer now than she used to be.” Meghan would tell Carly. Dave would also encourage her to reach out with a “she misses you.” or “don’t you think this has gone on long enough?” Her father attempted once to intervene, but Carly’s “Don’t you start with me now!” made him back off rather quickly.
While Carly always did think (secretly hope) one day there would be a potential reconciliation, stubbornness from Carly, and a sudden fatal heart attack from Melissa, made any possibility of that now an impossibility.
The morning of her wake, Melissa’s three children reunited in their childhood home for the first time in six years.
Meghan (a restaurateur in the city) had come in the day before, and was staying in the house with her stepfather. Dave, who had a small apartment in Jersey, opted to stay with Carly, despite Daniel offering them to stay at his place.
Carly, Dave and Meghan were all single and childless. The first of many times during the funeral, Meghan broke down was when her aunt told her how much her mother wanted to be a grandmother, and would have made an amazing one.
When the phone rang for the fourth time the morning of the funeral, Carly was over it. She went for the phone, this time before it could go to the machine. It was the same unlisted number, and the caller left no voicemail.
“Yeah!” Carly answered the phone with aggravation.
All she could hear on the other end was static.
“Hello?” She asked with annoyance.
“Bbhakie” was all Carly could make out from the faint voice through the sound of the static.
“What? I can’t here you!” Carly plugged her other ear with her finger, trying to block out any other noise from the room. “Who is this?”
“Baaaadie” was all Carly could make out from the faint voice through the sound of the static.
“Look, I’m sorry I can’t hear you. Ok, try calling me back later.” Carly hung up the phone, finished her morning routine, and went downstairs to greet her brother who was dressed for the funeral.
“Sorry I was on the phone.” Carly said.
“Who’d you call?” he asked.
“Nobody, someone kept calling the house, but I couldn’t hear them.”
“Really?” Dave questioned her.
“The phone kept ringing, you didn’t hear it?”
Dave shook his head, “No. Who called?”
“I don’t know, I couldn’t hear them.” Carly said, before shrugging her shoulders.
Four days after Melissa was buried, Carly was going to Florida. She had been planning this trip for over a year, with her best friend and fellow teacher, Grace. Grace told her she needed to get out of the suburbs, and meet some ‘hot Miami guy.’ This trip was going to be Carly’s escape, and she wasn’t going to allow her mother’s unexpected death to ruin it.
The funeral was simple. Not many people in attendance, but enough. The sort of affair the late Melissa Gaines would have been satisfied with.
…ng… ing… “cade shom, name unavailable…” was all Carly’s sleeping ears could make out at first. She checked her phone, near the left of her bed to see the time. 4:32, the bright iPhone screen shined and took her eyes a moment to adjust. It took another moment for her to fully realize it was AM and not PM. She grabbed the house phone, knocking it to the ground at first. She waited a minute, eyes closed and teeth ground tight, expecting Dave to come up. Soon, it wasn’t Dave, but another ring that broke the silence. She grabbed the phone enraged.
“Who the hell is this?” she growled into it.
There was nothing but that same static from earlier, but now it sounded like someone rubbing the phone against their shirt. “It’s 4:30 in the goddamn morning!” She said angrily. “Why do you keep calling me?”
“Carly?” The voice was sharp and scratchy. Not one she had heard in a long time. She knew she knew it, but didn’t know from when or where.
“Yeah, who’s this?” Carly asked concerned.
“It’s mommy honey.”
The words made no sense. It couldn’t be, there was no way that could be true.
“What?” Carly asked with a sense of disbelief. “Whoever this is, it’s not funny!”
“I need you to listen to me sweetheart! I’ve been trying to call you for days.” The more she spoke, the lower the static from the line continued. The more she spoke, the more Carly could hear her mother’s voice. “Sweetie, we don’t to have a lot of time, so I need you to listen to me carefully.”
“Mom?” She asked with disbelief and fear. “Mom, I... you...” Carly began to hyperventilate into the phone. “M...m...”
“Honey listen, I need to tell you two things that are really important.”
“Mom, wait I don’t unde...”
“Honey, please! I have to talk fast. You can’t go on that trip!”
“What?” Carly’s shaking voice asked.
This was the voice from that sweet side Melissa had. It wasn’t often there, but it could happen.
“Something terrible is going to happen, you have to promise me, you will not go on that trip. Please baby, I need you to promise me.”
The phone began to make that same static sound, and the voice of what could have been the late Melissa Gaines was fading.
“Wait, what is it? What’s gonna happen?”
“The last thing I need to tell y...” The line began to get cut by the static again.
“Mom! Mom!”
“H...ey. Ca... ear... e?”
“Mom, wait I can’t hear you!”
“Watch the...”
“What?”
“Watch the tap...”
“What? Mom what are you saying? I can’t hear you!”
“Watch the tape!” The voice on the other end yelled, with one last burst of strength.
The call cut, and the line went dead.
Carly sat up, not knowing what to think or say. She held the phone close to her ear, and waited for something. Anything, but got nothing.
The next morning, Carly came downstairs to her brother eating a bowl of cereal.
“Hey, good morning.” he greeted her.
Carly sat down at the table, arms folded in her hoodie and sweatpants, staring off into space.
“You ok?” Dave asked his sister, who was too distracted to answer him.
“Car?” He asked again, before clinking his spoon against his bowl three times.
Carly looked up at her brother, startled.
“What?” Carly asked.
“Are you ok?”
“Yeah. I’m ok.” Carly said, clearly lying. “The phone didn’t wake you up last night?”
“What phone?”
“Never mind. Just having a weird few days that’s all.”
“Yeah, I get it. You hungry?”
Carly looked back at her brother. “No.”
Dave went back to eating his cereal.
“Is there a hurricane in Florida?” Carly asked her brother.
“What?”
“A hurricane, like that’s gonna hit Florida?”
Dave shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. I mean it’s August, I guess it’s possible, but I haven’t heard anything. Why, have you?”
“No. Just wondering that’s all. Have there been any, like, tragedies?”
“What do you mean? In Florida? I don’t know, I don’t know anything about Florida, other than that it’s run by an idiot.” Dave said with a chuckle.
“No, I know that.” Carly said after rolling her eyes. “I mean. I don’t know what I mean.”
The two sat together in an awkward silence for a few seconds.
“What about a tape?” Carly asked, breaking the silence.
“What tape?”
“Do you know anything about a tape?”
“No, what tape?”
“Nothing, forget it.” Carly said, after a huff.
The room once again filled up with silence.
“Are you sure you’re alright?” Dave asked, concerned.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Really, I’m ok.”
“Ok. I was gonna drive back to Jersey today around noon, but if you want I could stay here a little longer.”
“No, that’s silly. You do what you gotta do. I’m fine, really.”
Dave left a little after 12:30 that afternoon. As soon as he left, Carly began to research Florida, in particular, Miami, to see what was going on.
She checked to see if any storms were set to hit. Perhaps, a shark attack. Even checked to see if anyone had escaped prison, and the state was in the midst of an extensive manhunt. She continued her research well into the night. Even though her eyes ached from the screen, her back hurt from sitting for so long, and her head was dizzy from reading, she just couldn’t stop. She couldn’t find out anything on Florida that pertained to the phone call. The last thing she looked at that night, before she mentally, and physically just couldn’t take it anymore, was a terrorist threat to the airline. But, even that, proved uneventful.
She didn’t know what the phone call meant. She didn’t know what could possibly happen to stop her from a great trip in Florida. And the tape? What the hell was the tape?
This could have been, if for the sake of argument, any of this was real, this could have been her mother’s way of messing with her. Maybe she was angry Carly hadn’t called her. Maybe she was disappointed, Carly didn’t cry at her funeral. Or maybe, just maybe, she could see something Carly couldn’t, and in some strange freak break with reality, she was able to warn her about it.
Carly spent the whole night awake thinking about all of it. What any of this meant, and what she was going to do in order to understand any of it. She didn’t know much, but she did know one thing. All of a sudden, that great Florida trip didn’t sound so perfect anymore.
“Wait, are you serious?!” Grace asked in complete shock and distress. “You can’t be serious! This is a joke right? A bad practical joke.”
Carly had called Grace to tell her that she couldn’t go on the trip, and advised her not go either.
“I know this sounds crazy, but you just have to listen to me.” Carly pleaded on the other end of the phone. “I can’t explain why, but I just have a really bad feeling about all of this.”
“Look, I know you’ve been going through a lot over the last few days, losing a parent is tough and all, although I thought you hated your mother, so I don...”
“I didn’t hate my mother!” Carly interrupted. “Why would you even say something like that?”
“Ok, I’m sorry, forget I said that.” Grace corrected herself. “I’m just saying, I get it. Lots of emotions over the last few days. But you can’t just bail on me like this. It’s not fair, this trip is just as much for me as it is for you.”
“Grace, I’m sorry. I know this is all coming out of the blue, but I just need you to trust me.”
“No. This is so selfish of you. I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.”
“Please Grace, just listen to me, you’re my best friend I need you. Something bad is gonna happen on that trip. Please, trust me.”
“I don’t, and I’m not changing my plans because you have a hunch. I’m going to Florida on Thursday. You can either forget we had this conversation, and come with me, or you can stay behind, and waste your time and money.”
“I’m sorry Grace.”
“Yeah, so am I.”
Grace hung up the phone, leaving Carly to sit by herself in her house, with the only sound to fill the silence being the dial tone from the phone.
A man named Jake Brice, was the first person interviewed. He, along with countless others were stuck on the I-95 in Virginia. At first all he, or anyone stuck in that traffic jam could hear was the thunderous howl of the engine, and the vibrations as their cars began to shake violently. Before he could piece together what was happening, the airliner, tilting violently to its left, black smoke flying from it’s engine, flew directly overhead, missing the cars and roads by only a couple of hundred feet. Within seconds, the smoking wing skied across the pavement of the ground next to the road, pulling the plane, which exploded into a giant fireball, down with it. After the crash, Brice, along with several others, raced out of their cars, over to the wreckage trying to help whomever they could. Brice described the scene as “horrific” and “catastrophic.” Nobody survived the crash of Flight 1216, en route from New York to Miami. Of its original manifest of 117, 116 were killed by what experts believe was a bird that got sucked into the wing, causing engine failure. Carly didn’t say anything watching the coverage. She didn’t even shed a tear knowing Grace was one of the 116 to die. She just watched the TV, waiting for the phone to ring with a call that never came.
A month had gone by since the crash, and a memorial service was held for Grace on the first day school started.
Carly began to see a therapist that fall, to discuss losing both her friend and mother. As well as the issues she and her mother had.
She liked her therapist, and trusted him with everything. The only time she ever lied to him was when he asked her why she cancelled the trip.
Carly took a deep breath, looked up at him and said, “I needed time to mourn my mother.”
That Christmas, all three Gaines children spent the holiday with their father. Christmas morning, all four opened gifts by the tree, just like from when they were kids. They then ate breakfast, and watched Melissa’s favorite holiday movie, It’s a Wonderful Life.
After the movie, they all made their way around the house to clean up.
“Oh Car, I almost forgot.” Daniel said to his daughter. “Come on, I wanna show you something.”
Carly followed her father from the kitchen to the living room, where he gave her another present. This time in a bag instead of wrapped up.
“I found this, and I thought you would want to see it. I know your mother would.”
Carly opened the bag to find an old VHS tape. It was black, but in reasonably good shape.
“A tape?” she asked trying to hide her concern.
“Yeah, we still got the VHS working downstairs, you know me I hate throwing stuff away. Go down and watch it. I think you’ll enjoy it.”
Carly made her way into the basement, took a deep breath before putting the tape into the machine. It was old and a little grainy. The date on the bottom corner of the screen read, “Aug. 25, 1990.”
The tape was Melissa, holding Carly as a baby in a rocking chair. Melissa looked up at and smiled.
“Why are you filming this?” Melissa asked her husband.
“Because one day you’ll wanna see it, that’s why.” Daniel said laughing.
Melissa looked back down at baby Carly, and began to hum.
Carly watched the tape for several seconds, before letting out the tears she had been holding in since her mother’s death.
Ring... Ring... “Call from, NAME UNAVAILABLE”... Ring... “Call from, NAME UNAVAILABLE.”
Carly looked over at the phone on the table next to her.
Ring... “Call from, NAME UNAVAILABLE.”
Carly smiled, and wiped the tears away from her eyes.
She grabbed the phone, put it against her ear, and spoke.
“Mom?”
Author’s Note:
My inspiration, and dedication, for this story would have to be my nana Mildred. Who, like Melissa Gaines, was a good woman, with a hard shell.
To anyone reading this in a similar place with loved ones, before it’s too late, pick up the phone and make a call.
Your writer friend,
Mike