Chapter 3: A Pattern of Static

Chapter 3: A Pattern of Static

The city had a new name for the horror. On the morning news, on talk radio, in the bold, stark headlines of the local paper, they called it the ‘Suicide Cluster.’ It was a sterile, clinical term for an epidemic of madness. The reports were carefully worded, omitting the most gruesome details, but Leo knew. He filled in the blanks with the image of a woman’s ruined face and the sickening crunch of a skull impaled on wrought iron. The news made the terror official, tangible, yet it did nothing to explain it. To the world, it was a tragic psychological phenomenon. To Leo, it was the steady, patient work of an invisible predator.

His world had shrunk to the four walls of his apartment and the frantic, paranoid patrols he called walks. Sleep was a luxury he could no longer afford. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the blank, empty gaze of the man at the park, a final, silent accusation.

The phones were the true source of his torment. He started seeing them everywhere. A flicker of polished metal in a darkened alleyway, the ghost of a coiled cord in a shop window’s reflection. He’d freeze, his blood turning to sludge, only to realize it was just a fire alarm box or a tangle of old cables. The signal-to-noise ratio in his head was shot. Were they real, or were they phantoms projected by his own terror? The uncertainty was a special kind of hell, blurring the lines between the haunted world and his own fraying mind.

He couldn't live like this. The analyst in him, the man who built a life on finding order in chaos, refused to be a passive victim. Fear was a paralytic, but obsession was a stimulant. He needed data.

One afternoon, he walked into a stationery store and bought a large, detailed map of the city, a box of red pushpins, and a black-spined ledger. Back in his apartment, he cleared his coffee table and spread the map out, the grid of familiar streets a welcome sight of logic and order.

The first pin went into Ellison Street, where the ghost had first appeared. He wrote the date and a single word in the ledger: Vanish.

The second pin was pushed into the location of the Northgate Mall. Beside that entry, he wrote the date and the news report’s sanitized description: Female, 38, self-inflicted lacerations. The memory of her laugh made his hand shake.

The third pin marked the small, deserted park. His breath hitched. Male, approx. 55, impalement. He paused, the pen hovering over the page, before adding: He saw me.

Staring at the three red dots, he felt a flicker of his old self. This was a data set. A horrifying, impossible data set, but a data set nonetheless. There was no discernible geographic pattern yet—a derelict side street, a bustling suburban mall, a quiet residential park. The locations seemed random, designed for maximum psychological disruption. But randomness was often just a pattern you hadn’t decoded yet. He needed more data points. He needed to know what the police knew.

The thought of walking into a police station was terrifying. They would think he was a lunatic, a crank wasting their time. But what was the alternative? To wait for the next red pin to appear on his map? To watch another person answer a call meant for them? The image of the man’s empty eyes gave him the push he needed. He was already a part of this. Hiding wouldn't change that.

The precinct was exactly as he’d imagined: smelling of stale coffee and disinfectant, a place where human misery was processed with bureaucratic indifference. He gave his name to the desk sergeant, a man with a face like a worn leather shoe, and asked to speak with whoever was in charge of the ‘suicide cluster’ investigation. The words tasted like ash in his mouth.

He was told to wait on a hard plastic bench. After forty minutes that felt like a lifetime, a name was called. "Leo Vance?"

He looked up to see a woman in her early forties, her dark hair pulled back in a severe, professional bun. She wore a sharp blazer and an expression of profound weariness, but her eyes were like chips of flint—hard, intelligent, and missing nothing. This was Detective Isabella Rossi.

She led him to a small, cluttered office, gesturing for him to take the chair opposite her desk. The wall behind her was a corkboard tapestry of horror. Crime scene photos were pinned next to maps and scribbled notes. Leo caught a glimpse of a blood-soaked bathroom stall and a dark, grainy photo of the fence by the park before forcing himself to look away.

"You said you have information about the recent suicides," Rossi began, her voice a low, no-nonsense monotone. She didn't sound hopeful. She sounded like a woman who had already interviewed a dozen psychics, conspiracy theorists, and attention-seekers that week.

"They're not suicides," Leo blurted out, his voice thin and reedy. "Not really."

Rossi’s expression didn't change. She steepled her fingers. "Go on."

He took a shaky breath and began. He told her about the payphones. How they appeared out of nowhere and vanished just as quickly. He described their impossible, pristine condition. He sounded, even to his own ears, completely unhinged.

"Payphones," Rossi repeated, her voice flat. "Old-fashioned, Bell-style payphones."

"Yes. The woman at the mall—I was there. I saw her. She answered the phone just before… before it happened."

For the first time, a flicker of interest appeared in Rossi’s sharp eyes. "You were a witness at the Northgate Mall incident? Your name isn't on any of the preliminary reports."

"I didn't stay. I was..." Terrified. "...confused. I didn't realize what had happened until I saw the news."

"I see," she said, the two words carrying a mountain of skepticism. She made a small note on a pad. "And what else?"

This was it. The moment of truth. "There was another one. Two nights ago. Near Westgate Park, on Fillmore Street." His heart was pounding, a frantic prisoner against his ribs. "A man. He answered the phone. Then he… he ran at the fence."

Detective Rossi stopped writing. She put her pen down very slowly, her gaze locking onto his. The professional weariness was gone, replaced by a focused, predatory intensity.

"Fillmore Street," she said, her voice dangerously quiet. "That scene is still under active investigation. It hasn't been released to the press. Tell me, Mr. Vance, how would you know about that?"

Leo felt a cold knot of dread form in his stomach. He had made a terrible mistake. "I was there," he whispered. "I saw it. I was across the street. He looked right at me before he did it."

Rossi leaned forward, her eyes narrowing. "You were a witness to a second unnatural death in less than a week, and you failed to report either of them?"

"I was scared! You have to understand, this isn't normal. It's the phones, they—"

"Mr. Vance," she cut him off, her tone now cold and sharp as broken glass. "What is your relationship to the deceased?"

"I don't have one! I don't know them!"

"But you just happened to be at the scene of two separate, extremely bizarre incidents? That's quite a coincidence." Her logic was a steel trap, and he had just walked right into it. She no longer saw him as a witness, or even a crank. She was looking at him as a person of interest. A variable that kept appearing in her data. An anomaly.

He tried to explain again, his words tumbling over each other, a frantic, incoherent stream of impossible facts and raw terror. He talked about patterns, about the phones being a weapon, about the blank look in their eyes. The more he spoke, the more he saw the certainty hardening in her face. The certainty that he was either lying or dangerously insane.

"I'll need your address and phone number, Mr. Vance," she said, picking up her pen again. Her voice was clipped, official. "And I'd advise you not to leave the city."

Leo gave her the information in a daze. He stood up, his legs unsteady. He had come here seeking an ally, someone to help him fight the encroaching darkness. He had walked out with a target on his back.

As he stumbled out of the precinct and back into the indifferent noise of the city, a new, more tangible fear joined the supernatural dread that had been his constant companion. He was now trapped. Trapped between a phantom enemy that killed with a phone call, and a real one that saw him not as a terrified witness, but as a potential monster. He had never felt so utterly and completely alone.