Chapter 4: The Haunting in the Hallway

The single word echoed in the dead air of the kitchen, a phantom sound that had already faded but was now permanently etched into my brain. Liam. It wasn't just a random whisper from the static anymore. It was personal. It had crossed a line from being a strange, terrifying phenomenon to a direct, targeted threat. It knew me.

I slammed the receiver down, my hand flying back as if the plastic had burned me. I stumbled backward, my breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps, my back hitting the cold, smooth surface of the refrigerator. The friendly glow of the moonlight through the kitchen window suddenly seemed predatory, casting long, skeletal shadows that danced at the edge of my vision.

My rage had evaporated, replaced by a deep, primal fear that was colder and heavier than anything I had ever felt. It was the terror of a mouse that has just heard the click of the trap.

I couldn't do this alone anymore. The isolation was a poison, and the entity was using it to break me down. I needed an anchor. I needed one person in this house, in this world, to believe me.

Without thinking, I bolted from the kitchen and took the stairs two at a time, my bare feet pounding a frantic rhythm. I burst into the living room, where Thomas was still camped out in front of the TV, the screen bathing his face in the flickering blues and oranges of his game. He was wearing headphones, his thumbs a blur on the controller as digital soldiers fought and died in a blaze of pixelated glory.

I strode over and ripped the headphones off his head.

"Hey! What the hell?" he yelped, whirling around, his face a mask of annoyance. "I was in the middle of a firefight!"

"Turn it off," I said, my voice a low, trembling command.

His annoyance melted away as he saw my face. "Whoa, Liam. You look like you've seen a ghost." The joke fell flat, dying in the tense air between us.

"Turn it off, Thomas. Please."

He must have heard the ragged desperation in my voice, because for once, he didn't argue. He hit the power button on the console, and the cacophony of war was instantly replaced by an unnerving silence. We were left in the quiet, brightly lit living room, the cheerful family photos on the mantle watching us. The normalcy of the setting felt like a cruel mockery.

"It knows my name," I whispered, the words feeling like shards of glass in my throat. "I yelled at it. And it answered. It said my name."

Thomas stared at me, his mouth slightly agape. I could see the gears turning in his head, the struggle between brotherly concern and the deep-seated skepticism that was his default setting. "Liam, maybe you just thought you heard—"

"No," I cut him off, my voice sharp. "I'm not crazy. And I'm not imagining it. You want to know why this is happening? Why it's me? It's not about the phone. Not really. The phone is just… how it got back in."

I sank onto the ottoman across from him, my body feeling heavy and ancient. "This started a long time ago. I was nine. At Grandma’s house."

The Big House. The name hung in the air between us. For him, it was a place of happy, hazy memories of summer visits and freshly baked cookies. For me, it was a mausoleum holding a horror I had tried to wall up and forget.

"I've never told anyone this," I began, my eyes fixed on the floral pattern of the living room rug, unable to meet his gaze. "We were there for the Fourth of July. The house was full of people—aunts, uncles, cousins everywhere. It was loud and chaotic. But I wandered off. I went upstairs."

The memory rose up, not as a thought, but as a full-sensory experience. The air in our cozy living room suddenly felt colder, thick with the scent of dust, lemon polish, and something else… something like dried, decaying flowers.

"You remember that long hallway upstairs? The one that ran the whole length of the house?"

Thomas nodded slowly. "Yeah. It was creepy. Grandma kept all the old paintings there."

"It wasn't just creepy," I said, my voice dropping. "That day, it was… wrong. I was standing at one end, and it looked… longer than it should have. Like it was stretching. The door at the other end looked a mile away. And the wallpaper…" I looked up at him, my eyes pleading for him to understand. "The wallpaper with the faded flowers? The vines were moving. Twisting. Like snakes."

The very same wallpaper from my nightmares. The patterns I had been subconsciously sketching for weeks.

"I should have run," I continued, my voice barely a whisper. "Any sane kid would have run. But I didn't. I felt… pulled. Like something was reeling me in. And then I heard it."

"Heard what?" Thomas asked, leaning forward, his game completely forgotten.

"A phone ringing. An old one, like the orange one. A loud, angry ring coming from the far end of the hall. It was the only sound in the whole house. It felt like it was ringing just for me."

I took a shaky breath, the memory closing around me like a fist. "I started walking down the hallway. I couldn't stop myself. With every step, the shadows in the corners got darker. They weren't just shadows, Thomas. They were… thick. They had shapes. They reached for me. I could feel the cold coming off them, these long, thin fingers of darkness trying to grab my ankles."

I could see it all behind my eyes: a small, terrified nine-year-old boy, walking as if in a trance down an endless corridor, flanked by writhing darkness.

"I was halfway down when I saw him. Just for a second. A silhouette in the dim light at the far end of the hall. A boy. Small, like me. He was just standing there, in the dark. And the ringing was getting louder and louder, like an angry wasp trapped in a jar right beside my ear. I was so scared I couldn't even scream."

My hands were clenched into fists, my knuckles white. "I don't know why I did it. Grandma used to take us to church sometimes, you know? It was the only weapon I had. I squeezed my eyes shut and I just… I started praying. I whispered the Lord's Prayer. 'Our Father, who art in heaven…' Over and over again."

"And what happened?" Thomas breathed, his eyes wide.

"The moment I said 'deliver us from evil'… it stopped. The ringing cut off. Just like that. I opened my eyes, and the hallway was just a hallway again. Normal length. The shadows were just shadows. The boy was gone."

I finally looked up and met his gaze. My face was wet with tears I hadn't realized I was crying. "I ran. I ran so fast I almost fell down the stairs. I never told anyone. I convinced myself it was a bad dream, a kid's overactive imagination. I buried it. For seven years, I buried it. But when that orange phone came into this house… it woke him up. Or maybe… maybe it gave him a new way to call."

The room was utterly silent. Thomas just stared at me, his expression unreadable. This was it. The moment he would call me crazy, tell me I needed help, and walk away, leaving me completely alone.

Instead, he slowly shook his head, a look of dawning horror on his face. "The handprints," he whispered. "The other night, when you woke up screaming… you said you dreamed something touched you."

I nodded, my throat too tight to speak.

"The dusty handprints on your shoulders."

My blood ran cold. I'd never told him that detail. I’d seen them, washed them off, and held that specific piece of terror inside. But in my sleep-deprived, panicked state, had I mumbled it after waking from the nightmare?

"I… I heard you talking in your sleep that night," Thomas admitted, his voice low. "You kept saying 'the wallpaper's moving' and 'don't touch me.' I came into your room. You were sweating like crazy. I saw them, Liam. The smudges on your shoulders. I thought… I don't know, I thought maybe you’d rolled in some dust under your bed or something. I tried to forget it because it was too weird."

He looked from my terrified face to the dark kitchen, where the Orange Anomaly hung on the wall like a silent predator. The final piece of his skepticism crumbled, replaced by a chilling, undeniable belief.

"It's real," he said, not as a question, but as a statement of fact. "This is all real."

A wave of relief washed over me, so potent it almost made me buckle. It wasn't a happy feeling. It was the grim relief of a soldier who, hunkered down in a trench, finally sees a friendly face join him in the dark. The fear was still there, vast and overwhelming, but it was no longer mine to bear alone.

We were in this together now. And the thing on the other end of the line had just lost its most powerful weapon.