Caller:(sharp intake of breath) Something just…something just hit the floor. In the kitchen. That was… that was inside. That was inside the house.
(Long silence. The caller’s breathing becomes very shallow, very controlled; the deliberate stillness of someone trying desperately not to make a sound. In the background, a slow and wet dragging sound crosses what sounds like linoleum flooring. Then stops.)
(Then starts again. Closer.)
Dispatcher:(lowering her own voice instinctively) Sir. The pantry door is still closed?
Caller:(lips barely moving) Yes.
Dispatcher: The shelving unit is still in place?
Caller: Yes.
Dispatcher: Don’t move. Don’t speak if you can help it. I am right here with you. I am not going anywhere.
(Silence stretches. Ten seconds. Twenty. Somewhere in the house, something knocks against a cabinet not with urgency, just contact, like a body bumping into furniture without noticing, without caring. Drifting.)
(Then the dragging stops directly outside the pantry door.)
Caller:(so quiet it barely registers on the recording) They’re… they’re right outside.
(A pause so long the dispatcher opens her mouth to speak.)
(Then something begins to scratch along the door. Not frantically, or like something trying to claw through. Slow. Back and forth. Exploratory. As if whatever is on the other side is simply feeling the surface; learning it.)
(Underneath the scratching, a sound begins. Low. Broken. Somewhere between a voice and something that has only ever heard voices and is trying to remember how they work. Wet. Toneless. The shape of language with nothing left inside it.)
Dispatcher: Sir, I need you to stay on the line. Do not hang up, do not—
Caller:(barely audible, voice fractured) That’s not a person. Whatever…whatever that sound is, that is not a person. That is not—
(The scratching stops.)
(One beat of total silence.)
(Then the door explodes inward, the entire frame buckles, the shelving unit screams across the tile, and wood shreds apart in a single catastrophic impact.)
Caller: THAT’S NOT—THAT’S NOT A PERSON—
(The scream that follows is short. Sharp. Surprised rather than prolonged; which is somehow so much worse. It cuts off with a damp abruptness. Something heavy lands. Something heavier follows it down. The phone skids; the audio pitches and warps and then settles, face-up, on the floor.)
(The dispatcher’s voice comes through clearly now, no longer filtered through a held hand or a trembling grip. She is talking into a void.)
Dispatcher: Sir? Sir, can you hear me? Sir, please respond—
(Movement in the recording. Something shifting. A wet, tearing sound, unhurried, without direction, as though circling.)
(Then, very close to the phone, something lowers itself.)
(Or bends.)
(Or falls.)
Dispatcher: Units are en route to 142 County Road. If anyone can hear me—this is 911 dispatch, please identify yourself, please respond—
(What answers her is not a voice. It comes up from somewhere deep and collapsed, ragged and guttural and close enough to the receiver that it distorts the audio completely; a sound that has no language in it, no thought, nothing recognizableexcept the faintest, most horrible suggestion that it was once capable of all those things.)
(The line goes dead at 11:54 PM.)
