Legacy

The dead never stay dead. Lost loved ones live on through the memories, lessons, and messages they left behind. They persist through the stories we tell, the pictures we took, and the family they created. That is their bequeathal to humankind. That is their legacy.

What people try hard not to talk about is the negative emotions associated with those family members who were...complicated. "Don't speak ill of the dead." Nehemiah Armstead did his best to follow this simple rule, but his relationship with his father had been tenuous at best. His dad was the kind of man who would get pissed about work, sports, or religion, and then take it out on his wife and children. No alcohol was ever required. Jeb Armstead was just like that.

"Why don't you just get a new job?" Katie asked. Her mouth was full of pizza, so the words came out as a mumbled facsimile of human language.

Nehemiah was fluent in pizza-tongue. "Have you seen the job market lately? It's not that easy to just 'get a job.'"

They were sitting in their favorite pizza shop, You Wanna Pizza Me. Best pie on the East Coast, according to Katie. Nehemiah thought it was alright.

"Are you sure this doesn't have anything to do with your dad's death? I know the anniversary is in a couple days. I can't imagine how hard that is for you right now."

When he didn't respond, she continued.

"It's just that it's been a year and you haven't given yourself the chance to truly grieve. I think it'll help your anxiety, and maybe even make things easier at work." She paused for a second, as though contemplating whether or not to say the next sentence out loud. "I think you should go see a therapist."

Rage flashed through his mind like a sudden wildfire. He started gathering up the remnants of their pizza and stuffing it into their takeout box. Katie quietly stood up to go as he slapped some cash on the table. They'd had this conversation before. It always ended the same.

The next day was a nightmare. That was how everyday spent in the office went, so it wasn't anything new. But that didn't make it any easier. A few months ago, the company decided to double their expected call quotas, and now everyone was miserable. Nobody ever accused call centers of being fun jobs, but this had become completely unsustainable. Most of his best friends had either quit or promoted up since their numbers increased. It was the only way to stay sane. Nehemiah had been trying, but there weren't that many jobs out there that sounded like they'd be any different, so he was still stuck taking a hundred calls a day.

By the time he got home, his lungs were fighting for air. His chest heaved as he gasped for oxygen, sucking in each breath with ragged, hitching sobs. No matter how hard he inhaled, his lungs couldn't seem to get full. The reality of going into work the next day pervaded every thought, overwhelming him with the preconception of a new day filled with the same nightmares.

Nehemiah pulled out his phone, but his face was moving too much for it to unlock. He barely managed to type in his passcode with shaking fingers. It was Katie's day off. She'd know what to do.

His fingers hovered over the green phone icon. Would she really know what to do? Or would she just tell him he needs to see a therapist? Even if she was able to calm him down, he wasn't sure he could stand another attempt to get him to face whatever trauma she thinks he has about his father's death.

He moved his hand to swipe the phone app away, but stopped short. The icon for voicemails was right there. Maybe there was some truth in Katie's words. His dad had treated their family like shit, yet Nehemiah still missed him. He pressed the voicemail icon.

All the voicemails his dad ever left him were still there. This archive of his father's voice was one of the only remnants he still had left. Their relationship had been better in the later years, after he moved out and they weren't around each other all the time. Most of these messages were mundane, but they represented one of the only times in his life that he had a good relationship with his dad.

He clicked the first message.

Hearing his dad's voice instantly brought tears to his eyes. He hadn't heard his father since before the heart attack. That deep, booming baritone filled his ears and pierced his heart with a lance of conflicting emotions that he didn't care to analyze. After that first one finished, he opened the next one, then the one after that. Before he realized it, his breathing had evened out, and his nerves calmed. For the first time in months, real peace washed over him.

The rest of the night, Nehemiah went about business as usual; with one notable exception. Every now and again, when the thoughts of tomorrow would start to creep in, he would open his phone and listen to one of his dad's voicemails. It made him feel better every time. As crazy as it sounded, Nehemiah felt like a changed man.

When the anxiety returned during his pre-bedtime ritual, he pulled out his phone again. There was a voicemail there he didn't recognize. It was dated for June 7th. That was the day his dad died. He didn't remember missing a call from his dad that day.

Nehemiah's eyebrows knit together, worry beginning to overtake the unusual calm he'd experienced all night. He opened the message. Jeb's familiar voice poured out of his phone as though nothing was amiss. It was a short message, nothing more than his dad saying he'd called to complain about his sports team losing or something. Relief washed over him. This wasn't a call for help while his father lay dying. There was nothing to worry about.

Nehemiah was about to close the app when the end of the message stopped him. Jeb's voice changed at the end. He wasn't sure how, but it was just a little bit different. All he said in this new, hushed tone were a few simple words: "Forty-eight hours left. Then that which is still will move again."

The phone rang. Nehemiah nearly screamed. Katie's smiling face was plastered all over his phone screen.

He checked the time. 9:33. She knew he was going to bed soon, but she called anyway.

"Hello?"

"Hey, babe. I just wanted to call and check up on you. Haven't heard from you all day. Is everything okay?"

Nehemiah smiled. "Yes, everything's fine."

The next day at work, Nehemiah was a different person. People he didn't know commented on how chipper he seemed. Even his manager remarked that he was excited to see Nehemiah finally hitting his call numbers. It was like the weight of the world had lifted off his shoulders and suddenly he could breathe again.

Halfway through the day, he got a call from a customer named Al. Everyone at the company knew this guy by name. Ten minutes later, that old anxiety was back. Al has a way of doing that to people.

Luckily, Nehemiah knew how to deal with it now. He took a bathroom break, hid in one of the stalls, and pulled up his dad's voicemails.

That was when he remembered the strange message from the night before. He scrolled to the newest messages, but it wasn't there. No voicemails were received on the day his dad died.

Weird. His thumb probably slipped and pressed the trashcan button when Katie called. Nothing to worry about, though. There were plenty more voicemails to keep him sane throughout the day.

He picked one out, listened to it, and then went back to work.

Later that night, Nehemiah found himself once again listening to voicemails periodically. As the day waned and the night drew closer to its end, his anxiety returned like an ethereal ghoul that was drawn to his fear and worry. Repeated use of the voicemails staved off the rabid phantasm, but it always came back hungrier and hungrier.

Nehemiah was reluctant to sleep that night. It took a herculean effort to drag himself away from his favorite videogame and make the long and arduous journey towards his room. On the way there, his phone buzzed in his pocket.

1 New Voicemail at 9:33.

His fingers went cold and stiff, like frostbite had taken its hold on his hands instantaneously. There were no missed calls; only a new voicemail.

With fingers barely able to move, he clicked on the message. June 7th. Hours before his dad's death. Jeb's voice came through his speaker casually, spouting some banal warnings about the political climate that he no doubt just regurgitated from some news site or the other. Nehemiah's spine tingled throughout the message, like somebody was tracing a playful, icy finger up and down his vertebrae just to tease him.

At the end of the message, his dad's voice changed again. "Twenty-four hours. A father's legacy lives on through his son."

Dread gripped his heart like a man-killing automaton had put its hand through his chest. The message from last night had been real. What the hell did it mean? And who was sending these to him?

He quickly swiped over and called Katie. She answered on the second ring.

"Nehemiah? What's wrong?"

He stammered through an explanation, but he was too flustered to make any sense. Even if he wasn't so incoherent, his story sounded like complete nonsense. Katie didn't say that in so many words, but she might as well have.

"Babe, are you sure you're doing okay?" She asked after a long period of silence. "Maybe you're just really tired. Is it possible you fell asleep, had a nightmare, and then woke yourself up believing it was real?"

He shook his head, then realized she couldn't see that through her phone. "No way. It happened last night as well, but the message wasn't there today, so I just figured it was a hallucination or something but it just happened again! This is real, and it's happened twice now!"

Another long pause. "Nehemiah, I think you should really consider going to see a therapist. I'm very worried about you."

"How can a therapist help me?" He asked. "Do you know any shrinks who specialize in voicemails sent from beyond the grave?"

"Okay, I think that's enough for tonight." Great. He'd pissed off the one person who might actually be biased enough to believe him. "Do me a favor and just consider seeing a therapist. Until then, I think you should get some rest."

"Katie, wait!" Nehemiah hesitated, suddenly unsure whether or not saying the next part out loud was smart. "What is he counting down to?" He whispered.

"Goodnight, Nehemiah."

He couldn't sleep that night. The message kept calling out to him, beckoning him to listen again and again, to try to figure out what it all meant, what he was supposed to do, anything to get some answers. When none came, he locked the phone in a drawer and tried to get some sleep. It was no use. His dad's voice just kept replaying in his head, repeating those same words that were both senseless and also very threatening all at the same time.

Going to work would've been pointless. There was no way he could've focused. He was sure his manager would be calling him repeatedly, but he kept his phone locked as far away from him as he could.

Katie would probably be worried when he didn't answer her texts or calls. That part hurt, but it was for the best. Clearly he couldn't count on her.

Nehemiah spent the day trying not to think about the voicemails. That proved a harder task than he imagined. Television didn't last long. Reading took too much focus. Even videogames didn't have their usual pull. Every few minutes, he reached for his phone instinctively, and every time he remembered it was gone, panic would start to set in. The only thing that offered a chance to relieve his anxiety was locked in his bedroom.

Eventually, he found himself standing motionless in his room, eyes locked onto the drawer that imprisoned his phone. It called to him. He wanted it. He needed it.

Before he knew what was happening, the drawer was open and his hand was inside. He looked down in shock at his fingers curling around the infernal device, and with a sudden rage that would've made his father proud, he spun and hurled his phone against the far wall.

It shattered instantly, the screen lighting up one final time before its remnants floated through the air in a thousand twinkling shards. Air escaped his chest in a rush. He felt as though he'd been unknowingly holding his breath since last night.

That evening, Nehemiah sat on the couch alone and wondered about his own sanity. He knew it'd been a tough year, but skipping work and destroying his phone were pretty extreme responses. Perhaps Katie was right. What if it was all in his head after all? Maybe it was finally time to admit that he needed the help of a professional.

As he sat and contemplated how to approach telling Katie she was right, he couldn't help but notice the distinct absence of his cell phone. He thought the loss of connection to the internet and social media would be crippling, but instead he found the quiet to be somewhat comforting. Stripped of any choice in the matter, the loss of his phone was actually like discovering there was a cruise liner sitting on his shoulders and then letting it roll into the tides and off his body. Still, every now and again, he could almost hear its maddening buzz.

In fact, something sounded faintly like that inside the house. Grateful for a distraction from his clock-watching, Nehemiah got up to look for some appliance or computer that must've been left on. When none appeared and the buzzing continued, he began checking cupboards and underneath cushions. The vibrating continued, and Nehemiah's heart raced to match the febrile buzz like some macabre Olympic event.

He overturned chairs, ripped open his mattress, knocked over dressers, but nothing seemed to be housing that manic sound. He wanted to scream and cry all at the same time. Without any course of action left, he collapsed on the floor and wept.

Nehemiah's hot tears traced wet lines down his face and pooled under his ear. The droplets poured down into the floorboards beneath his head, and as they did, he heard that infernal buzzing again. This time it was louder.

The tears ceased. He slowly lifted himself up on his elbow and pressed one hand to the floor. The wood beneath him creaked and budged.

Nehemiah grabbed a knife from the kitchen and stabbed it into the board. The wood soaked up his sweat and tears and screamed out at him as he pried and pried, but eventually it gave way. Underneath it, laying neatly in the dirt beneath the house, was his phone.

Ghostly grey light spilled from the earthen cubby as his phone buzzed again with a new call. The name on the screen said "Dad."

All sense of logic and self-preservation in his body shrieked at him not to answer, but his hand moved anyway. His muscles sang with melodious tension, fear paralyzing every part of him, but still his arm reached for the phone. There was a deep, burning desire in his chest that ached to hear his dad's voice. He needed the comforting words of a father long dead.

"H-hello?" He squeaked.

A thousand agonized voices wailed at him through the phone. Pain coursed through his body as he felt his eardrums burst inside his skull. He fell to the floor, his phone forgotten as his fingers scrabbled at his bleeding ears. It only took a few seconds for the sounds of shrieks to be replaced by little more than a muffled ringing sensation.

Something moved behind him, someone heavy stepping closer, a thudding footstep felt rather than heard. He turned to see a shadowy apparition towering over him in the middle of the room.

"Dad?" That single, pleading word barely made a sound to him, but the thing had clearly heard it.

It stepped forward into the moonlight spilling through the window, and Nehemiah's blood ran cold. He wasn't looking at his dead father back from the grave. It was his own face staring back at him, grinning a grin that he'd never made, licking his lips in a slow, methodical gesture intended to be threatening, a gesture that he recognized from his childhood.

The doppelganger knelt down and picked the discarded phone up out of the dirt. He deftly flicked open the camera and shoved the screen in Nehemiah's face. The horrified expression looking back at Nehemiah was that of his father's instead of his own.

Nehemiah's scream was cut short by a sharp, stabbing pain in his chest. His dad-self looked surprised, but then checked something on Nehemiah's phone. A wicked smile spread across his face, the corners of his mouth turning into jagged fissures that nearly reached his eyes. He turned the phone around and showed Nehemiah the time. Panic closed Nehemiah's throat and tightened the red-hot bands constricting his chest.

9:33 on June 7th. The exact day and time of his father's heart attack.

Katie's face popped up on the screen. Nehemiah's eyes went wide. The doppelganger slowly stood up, that sickening smile still plastered all over its face. As Nehemiah's vision faded, the last thing he saw was the creature walking away with his phone pressed to its ear.

"Hey, babe. I was just hoping you'd call."