My friend and I were both pretty happy to have received smartphones for christmas, this was back when they were a new thing. I think the year was 2007. We were so ecstatic, that for the next few weeks, everything we did included them. We were growing distant because of this but, in a way we were even closer now. We could literally talk to each other instantly, from wherever. Sometimes, I would call and he wouldn’t answer, but I made nothing of it, he was probably busy.
But then, there started to be even less times that he would answer, and, soon, none at all. This was very strange behavior for him, he normally would answer after one or two dial tones. One night, I called him again, someone did pick up, but it wasn’t him. What picked up instead was a single tone that seemed to play at different pitches. It was an obnoxious, ear bleeding sound.
It was so startling, I dropped my phone. I didn’t know what to do, I was so confused. What the hell was that tone? And, more importantly, was my friend in danger? I picked the phone back up, hung up and called the police. I didn’t know what else to tell them besides he’d been kidnapped. I normally wouldn’t lie to the police, but, under these circumstances, I saw fit to do so.
The police showed up to his house and immediately conducted a search when they saw that the bay window leading to the living room had been broken into. That’s where my knowledge of what took place ended, because that’s all they could disclose for the time being. But that little bit wasn’t enough for me. I just had to know for myself what exactly the police were hiding. So, the next day, I bought a big long sleeve jacket, some rubber gloves, a hair net and, to top it all off, tied some plastic bags around my shoes.
I did all of this so that I wouldn’t contaminate the apparent crime scene. I waited until dark when the police left to find my way in. Low and behold, the broken glass had fallen to the inside, indicating that an assailant had used this window to enter. It seemed as though no one was there, so I took it upon myself to do the same, glass crunching every step of the way. I looked around for a bit in the living room and found nothing of particular interest.
I then decided to make my way down the adjacent hallway to, what was presumably, his bedroom. In there, amongst a pile of old magazines and video games, I found his phone lying on the floor. It still had some charge left so I looked through it. Nothing really jumped out until I went through his call log and messages. He had received multiple calls, image files and audio files from the same unknown caller.
Even creepier than that, were the names of the files, each of them were labeled, “Mind control experiment”, followed by random sequences of numbers. The mp3 files were no more than just garbled speech that was impossible to make out. By far, the recordings of the calls were the worst. The person on the other end sounded creepy, monotone and almost robotic. It sounded like they were conducting some sort of hypnosis upon my friend. They repeated phrases like, “Listen to me”, “I can make you perfect”, and “Your absolution is near, kill for me”.
That last line terrified me to my core, but I pressed on. I needed to know what had occurred here. Across the hall was his mother’s room. I felt the urge to open her door. I still can’ t forget the scene I was met with, her body had been mutilated, parts of it were everywhere.
Her arms were ripped from her torso and nailed to the wall, her head was split in two with eyeballs still connected but dangling, blood covered the sheets, the ceiling, everything. I got the hell outta there, wishing I had just let it be. Who does that to someone, tricks them into doing their dirty deeds?
