Ghosted

'..... can't come to the phone right now but leave your name and number and I will get back to you as soon as I can."

Helen waited for the beep.

"Hi Damon, it's me again. I.... just haven't heard from you in a while. Is everything OK? Any way.... call me back when you have a moment. Or text. Whatever works." She hung up and sighed.

Nat stood leaning on the door frame and had been silent until now. "Helen, I know it's hard, but you have got to move on." She pushed upright and walked into the room. "You can't dwell on this. I know it sucks, I know you are hurting, but it's over." She put her hand on her flat mate's shoulder. The words were harsh, but true.

Helen's shoulders sagged. "I just can't believe this has happened. We are...... were...... so in love! How does this happen? How does someone just walk away after so long without so much as a good bye?' She tried to keep the petulant tone out of her voice, but the more she unloaded her emotional baggage, the more her composure slipped. "We didn't have a breakup! How am I supposed to 'move on' when I don't get closure for something that never really had an end??" She flopped into the backrest of the couch, Nat's hand falling off her shoulder.

Nat sighed. "I know Sweetie, it's rough. It sucks. It shouldn't happen. But it does. And you can't control other people." She shrugged. "The only thing you can control is you."

Sensing her words were falling on deaf ears, Nat's mouth turned down at the corners and she shrugged again. Nothing left to say, she drifted back out of the room.

Helen sighed heavily. She and Damon had made plans for a life. They were going to move in together finally. They had talked about getting engaged after she had finished her intern year and he had got his promotion. He was so good at his job, so well liked by his supervisors, he was bound to be the next in line for the leadership program. They had sat here, on this very couch and agreed to three kids and even a boy’s and girl’s name for the first. Why would he plan all this with her and then just ghost her?

Suddenly the walls were too close, the air too thick. She needed to get out of the house, out of her head, get some fresh air, get away from the memories.

It’d been a good idea in theory....... quite sound and mature, even if she did say so herself.

First, Helen took a stroll through the leafy park, the pathways set out like the spokes of a wheel, radiating out from the circular center with its massive babbling fountain and dramatic figures of some forgotten gods rising from the middle. That always soothed her soul and quieted her raging mind. The brisk evening breeze, the sleepy birds called as they settled in to roost for the night and at this time of evening there was a distinct lack of people around to disturb her Zen. Normally all this settled her nerves and blew the days worries away. But as the splashing of water got louder, the memories came tumbling in. Her and him, sitting cozied up on the park bench for warmth in Autumn, pouring through property listings and creating in their minds their perfect home, the one they would build and raise their kids in. Damon diligently following her latest fad, jogging, trailing a few steps behind and clearly disliking every second of it, but determined to support Helen in her goals. Her heart gave a little painful squeeze. She stopped dead in her tracks for a moment trying to remember how to breath before turning and leaving.

So maybe being around people might help stop the memories crashing in on her. She headed for the main street of town with its bright lights and early dinner crowds.

It was busy even at this hour.

The sidewalks were full of people talking and laughing. There were decorations and festive window displays everywhere she looked. She chastised herself. How could she have forgotten that it was coming up to Christmas? She felt that all-too-familiar pain in her heart again. She was supposed to be meeting Damon’s parents and his sister this year. Evidently that wasn’t happening anymore. This was a mistake, she thought. I’d be better off at home. She turned and crossed the street, heading home, her arms hugged across her chest where memories had just punched a massive hole, trying to hold herself together and feeling like she would fall apart into a million pieces if she didn’t.

That’s when she saw them.

Damon. Walking out of their favorite restaurant. THEIR favorite, his and hers. Helen and Damon. But it wasn’t Helen he was walking with. Long legs, big boobs, silky blonde hair, lips painted red. Her arm looped through his and she stretched her swan like graceful neck up to kiss him passionately. Helen wanted to scream "Whore!" at her. "You home wrecking whore!" She wanted to screech at him. But it was all she could do to keep breathing, to keep upright. To stay in one piece.

Her world had just imploded.

As soon as she got home and her hands steadied enough, she dialed his number.

* * *

Conner pulled up outside Damon's place, his sense of apprehension growing.

Just looking at the house gave him the sense that something was dreadfully wrong. It took a moment for him to pinpoint what it was. It was broad daylight on a beautiful spring day and every window in the house was shut tight and covered. Not a single shaft of day light would have reached the interior of the building. It was worse than he had anticipated.

Damon had been having trouble, he knew that, but this was worse than he had thought. When Melissa had rung his wife to tell her that she had broken up with Damon, Conner had tried to call him. But his phone was switched off. Tina had said Mel wouldn't give details on what had caused the split, just that Damon really needed help. For days now, Conner had been trying to do just that, help his best friend. But he hadn't responded to texts, social media messages, phone calls or anything else. He had cut off all electronic communications. None of their social circle had spoken to him, though worryingly, one girl who worked for the same company as Damon, just in a different department had said she had heard a rumor he had taken a leave of absence, endangering his position in the leadership program, his hard-earned promotion. It had been his focus for so long.

He walked slowly from the car to the front door, pausing a moment before knocking. A sense of dread about what he was going to find spread through his chest. The knocking seemed to echo strangely. Damon opened the door just when Connor had just about given up on it being answered.

His friend looked a wreck, a shadow of himself.

It looked like he had brushed his hair in the dark. His clothes were clean, but mismatched and he hadn't shaved in days. Black shadows looked like bruises under his eyes, standing out starkly against pale skin that hadn’t seen the sun for God knew how long. A big change from a guy who had always been well dressed and groomed.

“God Mate, you look like Hell.” He smiled, trying to make a joke of it, but his smile felt fragile. Damon said nothing, just stared for a moment before he turned and walked back into a dark house. Conner hesitated a moment before his feet carried him forward without making a conscious decision to do so.

There were no lights on, the only illumination from the open door. Conner decided to leave it open as he walked through. Unsure of where Damon had gone, he took cautious steps and let his eyes adjust to the gloom. The house was silent other than his own steps and the sound of his breath. There was no way of knowing where Damon had gone. He turned into the lounge room, taking small steps and trying to remember exactly where the furniture was placed. He misjudged and ran into the corner of the glass coffee table.

Swearing softly, his words sounded deafening in the silence. He was about to call out to his friend when a phone rang, causing him to nearly jump out of his skin.

Following the sound and managing to avoid running into anything else, he found Damon in the kitchen, perched slouched on a stool at the breakfast bar staring at the grey marble as the phone continued to ring.

“Are you going to answer that?” Conner made his way into the room and looked around. The curtains were drawn across the windows, but there weren’t as heavy or thick as the front rooms, making the kitchen brighter than the rest of the house. The room showed no signs of use. It was immaculately clean. Had Damon even been eating?

The phone rang out and silence prevailed once again.

“Damon, what’s going on? I’ve never seen you like this.” Conner opened the fridge, the light clicking on inside and revealing a half full bottle of milk (still in date to his surprise) sitting on the shelf beside a couple of takeaway Thai food containers. And Damon’s cellular phone. “Even after....... well, after...... even then you were not this bad.” He finished the sentence just as Damon’s phone lit up with an incoming call on silent. Conner snatched it up annoyed at his best friend for wallowing, noting the number the call originated from was withheld. He held it out for Damon to take.

He shied away from it like it was a poisonous snake and shook his head hard. Connor muttered under his breath and hit the button to answer the call

“Damon’s phone.”

“Where’s Damon? Why isn’t he answering my call? What sort of coward’s trick is this now!!” The voice was instantly familiar. His heart skipped a beat, then picked up again at double time, pounding in his chest. He thought Damon had sorted this out.

“Listen to me you psychopath! Leave him alone! Stop fucking calling you deranged bitch!” He hung up and tossed the phone onto the bench. “I thought you sorted this shit out! I thought you went to the police about her!”

Damon spoke, his voice croaked like he hadn’t spoken for a long time. “I did. They couldn’t find where the calls are coming from.”

Connor stared at him in disbelief. The house phone rang again. Connor reached for it.

“Don’t. Please. Don’t....” He had never heard Damon sound so broken before.

He lifted the receiver and could hear the screeching before he even lifted it to his ear. Her. Again.

He slammed the phone back onto its cradle and yanked it off the wall following the cord to the wall jack.

“Stop. Please stop.” Damon mustered some emotion this time. Connor detected a note of urgency in his tone.

He had expected the phone cord to become strained and offer resistance as he neared the end. Instead, the end of the cord flicked up in his face, causing him to flinch. It shouldn’t have been that easy, the jacks were usually a firm fit. Damon stared at the cord in his hand apathetically. Connor was still puzzling out how the cord had let go like that (maybe the securing clip was broken) when the phone rang again.

At first he thought there was a different phone. It took a few rings for him to come to the understanding that the phone he had disconnected was ringing again. What the actual......

In a few swift motions, without thinking about what he was doing, he took the still ringing phone off the hook on the wall, threw back the curtains, opened the window and pitched it out onto the concrete where it broke into pieces and fell silent.

Damon stared at the window. Finally he spoke. “That won’t help.”

Connor looked at him in shock for a moment. Suddenly, he had to get out of this place.

“Get a bag, pack some stuff, you can come to our place for awhile. I know Tina would love to see you.”

His friend slumped further and shook his head. “It won’t help.”

“Look, either you get your stuff and come with me or I’ll drag you out anyway.” Connor hoped he wouldn’t have to make good on his threat.

Damon stood up and grabbed his wallet and keys off the bench as his cell rang again. With mechanical movements he reached for his phone. Conner wrapped his hand around his wrist, restraining him.

“Leave it.”

Damon’s fingers strained towards it. “It’d be better for you if I took it.....”

Connor pulled his friend, leading him towards the door, still standing open, a portal back to reality and away from unidentified psycho stalkers and phones that shouldn’t ring but did.

“I said leave it.”

He slammed the door behind them and hurried Damon to his car. He needed to put some distance between them and Damon’s place.

* * *

Connor sat in the Coroner’s office with his arm around Damon’s sobbing sister’s shoulders only half listening to the findings. All he could think was: what if?

What if he had done more? What if he had gone to the police and insisted they do more for his friend? What if he had just called in sick that day and stayed with his friend? What if he had sent Tina out to dinner with her parents and he had stayed home with his friend? Would it have made a difference if he had let Damon pick his phone up like he had wanted to when he dragged him out of the house?

It had taken a couple days for the phone to start ringing at Connor’s place. It had started with the house phone. Tina answered that first call and copped abuse from the woman on the other end accusing her of being ‘a home wrecker’. Connor disconnected the phone and removed it from the house. Then the cell phones started. First it was his, just once or twice a day. He had learned not to answer unknown numbers and he kept his phone on silent with no vibration. Then the calls started coming to Tina’s phone. They had already been to the police again, to no avail. They couldn’t trace the number. So they rang the phone company. They had no record that Connor or Tina were even receiving the calls. The phone company fobbed them off saying the phones were faulty. One operator even accused them of trying to prank him. They both requested new numbers, but soon, the calls were coming in both night and day even with new numbers. Tina was at her wits end. They both understood now why Mel had left.

On that last day, sleep deprived and stressed out, Connor had left his phone on the bench as he left for work. He had got into the habit of turning his phone screen side down so he wouldn’t see the calls come up on the screen. When he got home, the phone was exactly where he had left it, but screen up. He figured he had just left it screen up in his haste and thought nothing of it, until it was too late.

Damon had said something about going to confront his stalker, she would stop if he did that. But Connor had been late getting out of the house for dinner.

Connor had said, “Don’t do that, she’s crazy! Look, I got to go, but we will talk about it in the morning. We will make a plan.”

They never got to talk.

In hind sight, he should have known something was wrong.

The phone calls had stopped.

There wasn’t one during dinner or overnight. He had checked later. The last unidentified number on his log had been about 10 minutes after he had left for work and it had been answered. The police had drawn the conclusion Damon had answered the call and spoken to his stalker. They surmised that whatever had been said prompted him to leave his friend’s house and make his way to the outskirts of the town to the burnt out husk of a house. The house and its story were well known in the town. A couple years before, an electric blanket had caused a fire in the old brick house where house mates Natalie Taylor and Helen Parker were fast asleep. The same Coroner was now delivering cause of death for Damon, had a year before reported both Nat and Helen had died of smoke inhalation in their sleep.

Damon had been devastated at the death of Helen. It’d been Mel who had pulled him out of his slump and told him life had to go on. The phone calls had started not too long after. A woman claiming to be Helen had started leaving messages on his voice mail. He had taken the messages to the police. He had lied and said it had been sorted. It wasn’t until he started dating Mel six months before his death that things had got out of control. The phone calls increased and became threatening. Mel had put up with it as long as she could, but everyone has their limits.

When Connor couldn’t find Damon the morning after the dinner with his in-laws, he had rung the police and told them his concerns that he may have gone to confront his stalker.

Damon had been found in the burnt out shell of Helen’s home. They had had to use dental records to identify him.

“..... accelerant had been used, the ignition point being a common house hold cigarette lighter in the right hand, consistent with the person being right handed.” The Coroner sounded so clinical, so cold. They probably should have had that empathetic police officer who had delivered the awful news to him and Tina do this report.

“Enough,” his sister sniffed and spoke, “that’s enough. I don’t want to hear it any more.”

Connor was glad it wasn’t Damon’s parents who had come to the meeting. He had offered to come with Cass when she had insisted on coming though.

“OK. Do you have any questions?” Dr. Thomas looked relieved he didn’t have to keep going, but reluctant to answer questions, like he had better places to be.

“What about the phone calls? Were they investigated further? How did she get everyone’s numbers? Why did the calls stop after that day? Are we sure she wasn’t involved if we don’t know who she is?”

Dr. Thomas sighed. “I’ve seen the screen shots of call logs, but there is no records of calls with the telephone company. There is no technology that would allow some one to do what you claim they did.”

He shook his head when Connor made to argue. “The cause of death asphyxiation due to smoke inhalation and it has been ruled a suicide. He held the lighter. It was still in his hand.”

“But Damon would never-“

The Coroner cut him off. “The ruling is suicide. I’m sorry, I know it’s hard to take.” He made an attempt to sound sympathetic but came off condescending instead. “I have some brochures here for helping deal with grief...”

Back outside in the sunshine, the world continued to go about it’s business as if Connor and Cass hadn’t lost a person who was a corner stone of their existence. It all felt so surreal.

Cass drew a deep shuddering breath. “Thank you Connor. I didn’t want to have to do this alone. This can’t have been easy on you either.” Her eyes were red from crying, but the hope that had been missing recently was creeping back. Connor suspected the opportunity to hear the report was the closure she had needed to join the pace of the rest of the world again.

He hugged her tight. “We grew up together. No matter what, we will always be family.” He let her go as the cab pulled up. He had offered to take her home, but she had refused.

She slid into the back seat as he held the door for her. “Don’t be a stranger, OK? We are still family. And I know Tina would love to have you around for dinner. Give your parents my love.” He waved as the car pulled away from the curb and stood rooted to the spot staring even after the tail lights had turned out of sight.

He felt... empty. Deflated. It was all over and now he wasn’t sure where life picked up again. He sighed and took his phone out of his pocket to message his wife and let her know he would be home soon. She still hadn’t fully recovered from everything that had happened and got anxious alone in the house too long.

There were missed call notifications on the screen. He hadn’t turned the ring tone or vibration back on even though the calls had stopped awhile ago, which is probably a good thing since he didn’t really want the phone ringing in the middle of the meeting with the Coroner.

The first call was Tim from the office, he had lost the electronic file for the new client they were dealing with. An easy fix. He text Tim back suggesting he look in the locked files on the secure network, the same place the office kept all files with sensitive information. A message from Tina checking everything was OK came next. He’d call her back in a minute.

The next message stopped him in his tracks and sent ice water down his spine. The voice. It was clear as a bell and distinct. Connor remembered the halls at school, hearing Damon’s voice over the din of hundreds of voices all talking at once. He always knew where Damon was.

“Hey mate, just wanted to say thanks. I’m good now.” A voice in the background of the message laughed. It sounded exactly like the psycho stalker who had been calling before Damon died. "Oh Damon, that’s an understatement. Better than good! You are right where you belong!" Damon laughed in the recorded message. “Of course, Helen, right where I belong.”

Connor’s hand trembled uncontrollably as he deleted the message without listening to the rest of it.

* * *

Ghosted is inspired by Adele's chart-topping hit, Hello.

Every time I heard that song, built on the mental picture of a story about Helen, a ghost who doesn't realise she is dead and desperately trying to hold on to her love without seeing the damage she is doing in the process.

Ghosted is the first in a planned series of short stories inspired by songs. Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it!