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Charlie hit the button and spoke, “Hello, you are on the air with Charlie Thurman.”
“Charlie...” The voice was barely a whisper. Charlie swallowed hard. It was her again. “Yes,” he attempted to sound cheerful but feared the shakiness would betray him. “Yes, it’s Charlie talk to me, babe...”
“Charlie, it’s happened again.”
Hearing her words, Charlie felt his heart skip a beat.
“Listen...Stephanie, I told you that if it happened again, not to call me but to call your therapist.”
“But I couldn’t call him... oh Charlie, what am I going to do? I can’t sleep at night anymore. These dreams are...getting to be too much.”
The woman’s voice did not sound as distressed as her words would imply.
It was calm and low. Not only that, it was eerie...damn eerie.
“I saw myself kill him, Charlie.”
“You killed him...” Charlie wiped sweat from his brow. He looked in the control booth and saw the program manager give him the thumbs up. Calvin loved it. This lunatic caller meant ratings to the dying Cincinnati radio show. Charlie had no choice but to stay on the line with her. He cleared his throat and shifted in his chair. “Tell me about the dream, Stephanie...”
“It was like the others, only I could smell the blood. I could feel the resistance as the knife pressed against his throat. I drank from his wound like an animal. God Charlie...I liked it.”
“Who was it this time?”
“My therapist,” she sighed, “So you see, I couldn’t call him. He’s just like the others.”
“Dead, you mean?” “Yes.” “Damn, woman, you don’t need me, you need a lawyer.”
Silence.
“Stephanie?!”
“I’m here.”
“God, you scared me.”
“I scare myself, Charlie.”
“I guess you do...I guess you do...” He ran his hand through his short cropped blonde hair as she continued.
“Before...I could dismiss them as dreams, Charlie.” she whispered huskily; her voice chilling thousands who sat near their radio, “But I’m awake now, and...”
“And what?”
“And I have his heart...in my hand...”
Calvin choked on his coffee in the control booth. The light came on; Charlie was given the signal to go to commercial.
Stephanie didn’t mind. She put her phone on speaker mode and set the receiver down to wait for Charlie to come back on the line. She looked at her right hand and an uncontrollable shiver ran through her body. Hunger. The blood had run down between her fingers and she resisted the urge to lick the crimson rivulets. Reaching for a tissue, she dabbed at them instead.
“Hello...you are back with Charlie Thurman. Stephanie, are you still there?”
“Yes. I’m here...” her voice sounded distant. A thump could be heard, then a click as she picked up the handset.
“Sorry, I was...washing my hands.”
Charlie swallowed. “Ok...You said you had WHAT in your hand?! His HEART???”
“Yes,” she said softly and without emotion, “I did.”
“Do you remember how it got there?”
“Yes.”
Charlie watched the policemen out of the corner of his eye as they spoke with the station manager. He tried to read their lips but Stephanie’s breathing in his headset kept pulling him back to her.
“Talk to me, Stephanie,” he urged. “Tell me what you did.”
“I had a most vivid dream, like the ones I’ve been calling you about, Charlie. I went to see my therapist because all I could get was his voice mail. I needed to talk to him in person, Charlie. I needed to...see if the dream was like the others...you know...true.”
“I understand...go on.”
“I went to his office, his apartment is over it. I knocked and he let me in. I told him about the dream I had about him.”
“Wait, you saw him after you had the dream?”
“Yes.” That was different. Her other callers hadn’t been so lucky. “When was this?”
“Yesterday, about one in the morning.”
“Okay, he let you in?”
“Yes.” “Then what happened?”
“He tried to console me; I was crying.”
“I can understand that.”
“Then I put my fist into his chest and ripped his heart out.”
The officer in the control booth pulled up a handheld radio and spoke into it hastily. He and his partner exited the booth at a run. They were able to trace it this time, he thought. Sweat broke out on his brow and he wiped it away as the husky voice filled his headset again.
“It was still beating as I sucked the blood from it, Charlie...it was...incredible.” Her voice finally took on emotion as she described in great detail how she killed him and drank the life from her therapist. “There is more, Charlie,” she said.
Charlie felt himself pale.
“I had a dream about YOU last night.”
Charlie couldn’t answer her. He just sat staring at the green light on the switchboard. It went red as she hung up the line.
Red...as blood.
Later that night, Charlie was sitting in front of his computer at home checking his e-mail. The modem made the connect sound and he mentally reminded himself to put a command in the software to turn the volume down next time. Wincing at the high pitched whine of the modem, her voice came to him again.
I dreamed about you last night.
PLEASE INPUT YOUR USER ID...
..dreamed..
PASSWORD?
..about you..
YOU HAVE 2 NEW MAIL MESSAGES.
..last night.
NO CARRIER
“What the hell?” Charlie looked at the screen and blinked to clear his tired eyes. “What do you mean no fucking carrier...?”
The phone rang.
RING ... the terminal window on his monitor echoed.
“Jesus Christ, I hate call waiting!” Charlie fumbled for the handset and picked it up. He looked at the clock on his desk.
RING ...
1:00 AM. Who the hell was calling him at this hour?
RING ...
“Hello?” he said into the mouthpiece.
“Charlie...”
His mouth fell open and he almost dropped the receiver.
“Why did you send them here, Charlie? I thought I could trust you...”
“Stephanie, you have to understand...”
“No Charlie.” Her voice was low and sounded almost remorseful. “You do. You don’t seem to understand the precarious situation you find yourself in. You led them to me and now I have no choice.”
“Wait a minute,” Charlie started to chuckle nervously, “There are always choices.”
“Yes, but now you have made yours, Charlie.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to pay you a little visit and then we don’t have to worry about my little secret coming out.”
“Jesus woman, half the state knows about your little secret. It was only a matter of time before the cops checked you out.”
“I’ll see you in a few minutes, Charlie.”
The dial tone sounded in his ear. He lowered the receiver to it’s cradle. God, he thought, what do I do now? I have a psycho on her way over here, I have to do something! He picked up the receiver again and pushed 9-1-1. Silence. He looked at the handset to make sure the wires were in the proper place and tried again. Still nothing.
“Cheap Radio Trash piece of shit...” He murmured aloud. Charlie’s eyes glanced at his computer screen and cleared it; thinking maybe - if anything - he could get the computer to dial out. Crawling under the desk to check the wires on the modem he wondered if he hadn’t he read somewhere that even if the emergency operators couldn’t get voice confirmation, that they obligated to send a car to investigate a 9-1-1 call? Before he could check the wires, his telephone phone rang. Startled, Charlie jumped, hitting his head on the underside of his desk.
“OW!” Well, at least it wasn’t dead... he could still call for help. Rising to his chair he reached for the phone, but before he touched the receiver, he noticed something wasn't right and he hesitated. The terminal window on his monitor was still blank.
The phone rang again and the terminal program window remained blank. He backed away from the desk, almost falling over his chair. His rational mind was screaming. Why isn’t the modem registering the incoming call and echoing the RING ...? This is impossible, he thought. Impossible! And yet...
It rang again.
“Fuck this.”
He grabbed his coat and ran for the door. If he couldn’t call the police on his freaky Twilight Zone telephone, he would just drive to the station and file a report... yeah, that’s what he’d do! He opened the door and stopped in his tracks.
“Why didn’t you answer the phone, Charlie?” She whispered through full red lips. Her ebony hair spilled over her shoulders and under her thick crop of bangs, were smoldering grey eyes with slitted pupils. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth and down her neck to unseen curves below the London Fog raincoat. Charlie staggered backwards as she stepped in and closed the door.
* * *
“This is KTLK with Chicago’s Best Talk, all the Time. Tonight’s discussion is on DREAMS and we have callers on the line... let’s go to one right now...Hello, you are on the air! What is on your mind tonight?”
“Hello...”
The voice didn’t sound anything like the 13 year old boy that showed on Carole’s index card. She shuffled through to make sure she hadn’t inadvertently pulled the wrong one. “I’ve been having these awful dreams lately and I don’t know what to do.”
“Awful dreams?” Since when was a wet dream “awful?” She pitched the card to the side - she had to have the wrong person.
In her best radio announcer's voice, she chuckled, “I seem to have the lines mixed up...I thought you were David, but I don’t think anyone could classify a sex dream as awful... who is this?”
“My name?”
“Yes, your name...”
Dead silence...then...
“My name...is Charlie.”
“Hey...didn’t you call last week on my show?”
“Yes...and the week before.”
“Could you hold the line for a moment? We have to please our sponsors, y’know.”
Music played in Charlie’s ear but he didn’t mind. He hit the orange
speaker button and placed the receiver in the cradle while he waited for Carole
to return to the line. She was nervous...he could tell.
In the shattered mirror, he appraised his pale face and spiked blonde hair through
slitted pupils... smiling.
“Charlie...? Charlie are you there?”
After several purposeful moments he fumbled with the phone and answered.
“I’m here...”
“God, you scared me.”
Charlie almost laughed aloud at her words. Striving to keep the humor out of his voice, he murmured, “I scare myself...Carole.”
He paused a moment to let her think on that while idly running the tip of his tongue over a glistening fang.
“I dreamed about you last night,” he said.
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