Level 1 - The Velvet Fears

Before the blood, before the screaming, there was just a ring. One ring. Always at 3:33 AM.

The landline was already there when I moved in.

Old. Beige. The kind with a coiled cord and push-buttons that clicked softly when pressed.

It sat on the wall near the kitchen like it belonged there—like it had always been part of the house.

I never used it.

Didn’t even plug it in at first.

But one night, not long after I’d unpacked, I found the cord coiled neatly on the counter, plugged into the jack.

I don’t remember doing it. Maybe I did. Maybe I was tired. Distracted.

That’s what I told myself.

The first call came three days later.

3:33 AM.

The ring jolted me awake—shrill, too loud for the silence of the house.

Too clear. Like it was cutting through everything.

I didn’t answer.

Who would be calling a landline at that hour?

It stopped after four rings.

I told myself it was a wrong number. A glitch. Some automated call.

But the next night, it rang again.

Same time. Same number of rings.

Four. Then silence.

By the third night, I picked up.

No one spoke.

Just faint static. Like the line was holding its breath.

“Hello?” I said. My voice sounded too loud in the stillness, like it didn’t belong there.

Nothing.

Then the line went dead.

I unplugged the phone. Left it that way.

But at 3:33 AM, it rang anyway.

No cord.

No dial tone.

Just the sound—clear, mechanical, insistent.

I didn’t sleep the rest of the night.

The next morning, I called the phone company.

They said the number hadn’t received any calls. No records. No activity.

I asked a neighbor if they’d heard anything strange.

They just frowned. “You still have a landline?”

I started keeping a log.

Each call, same time. Four rings. Always four.

Then nothing.

I tried recording the sound on my phone.

But when I played it back, there was nothing.

Just silence.

I called the police.

Told them I thought someone was harassing me. Maybe watching the house. Maybe breaking in at night.

They took me seriously, at first.

A patrol car came by. They checked the locks, the windows. Walked the property.

No signs of forced entry. No footprints. No tampering with the wiring. Nothing showed up on the security camera I’d installed by the back door.

“You sure it’s not a dream?” one of them asked, gently.

I wasn’t.

But it kept happening.

They ran a wellness check a week later. Said everything looked fine.

I overheard one of the officers muttering about “attention-seekers” and “people with too much time.”

After that, they stopped coming.

The neighbors started keeping their distance.

Crossing the street. Whispering when they thought I couldn’t hear.

A friend I hadn’t seen in months stopped by unexpectedly. Asked if I was okay. I told them the truth.

They left quickly and didn’t come back.

I started leaving the phone off the hook.

Didn’t matter.

The calls still came.

The ringing, always at 3:33 AM, began to feel… louder.

Like it wasn’t just in the air—but under my skin.

One night, I picked up without thinking. My body moved on its own. Like muscle memory for something I’d never learned.

The line was quiet at first.

Then—

I heard breathing.

Not static. Not interference.

Breathing.

Slow. Uneven.

And then a whisper.

Too faint to catch every word, but one sentence came through clearly.

It was my voice.

“Don’t go,” it whispered. “Don’t open the door.”

I slammed the phone down.

The silence after was worse than the sound.

I tried to sleep. Pretended it was a dream.

But something had changed.

The next night, it came again.

Same voice.

Same time.

But this time the tone was different.

More urgent. More afraid.

“Don’t go. Don’t answer. Please—don’t let it in.”

It was my voice. But not how I remembered it.

It sounded like I was falling.

I unplugged the phone but it rang anyway.

3:33 AM.

Every night.

Sometimes just once. Sometimes twice.

Sometimes more.

My voice began to change.

Not on the phone—my real voice.

It cracked in strange places. Echoed differently in rooms. Caught in the back of my throat like something was trying to crawl out with it.

I stopped answering my mobile.

Stopped checking my messages.

Stopped opening the curtains.

Stopped going outside after dark.

The press showed up one day.

Not to help. To laugh.

Someone must’ve leaked the story.

“Local Recluse Claims Haunted Phone Line.”

They filmed from across the street.

Smiled too wide. Asked questions that weren’t really questions.

I didn’t answer.

That night, the doorbell rang.

Not at 3:33.

At 2:59.

I looked through the peephole.

No one.

But I could feel something standing there.

Like the shape of a person—but colder. Too still.

I stayed awake until morning.

The next day, I found a note slipped under the door.

It was written in my handwriting.

“Answer tonight.”

No punctuation. No context.

Just those words.

The phone rang at 3:33 AM.

I answered.

This time, the voice didn’t whisper.

It screamed.

My name. Over and over.

Then:

“Help me.”

It didn’t sound like a recording.

It sounded like me.

Alive. Trapped. Dying.

Buried under something I couldn’t see.

I don’t remember what I said.

Or if I said anything at all.

The call ended.

The silence afterward stretched too long.

The hallway mirrors were cracked the next morning.

All of them.

Cracks spiderwebbing outward, from the inside.

The front door’s frame had splinters.

Deep ones.

As if something had been clawing to get in.

The voice didn’t come back the next night.

Or the one after.

But on the third night—

It returned.

Quieter now.

Closer.

“It’s almost time.”

That day, the lights flickered every time I moved through a room.

The television turned itself on, tuned to static.

The neighbors stopped acknowledging me at all.

One turned away when I waved.

Another pulled her child back by the arm when the boy tried to ask if I was okay.

The press never returned.

Maybe they were bored.

I left one final voicemail for the police.

No one responded.

By then, I think they’d made up their minds.

Said I was unstable. A liar. A lonely person making noise.

But I wasn’t alone.

Not anymore.

That night, I sat by the wall where the phone had once been.

There was nothing there.

No cord. No handset. No jack.

But I still felt the shape of it.

Like something unfinished.

At 3:32, the house shifted.

The walls seemed to breathe.

The air thickened. Cold pressed against my spine.

And then—

Silence.

No ringing.

Just a knock.

Not at the door.

On the wall.

Right behind me.

From the inside.

I ran to the kitchen.

Grabbed my phone.

Tried to call anyone.

But the screen was dead.

No light.

No signal.

Just black glass and my reflection.

And then the whole house moved.

Not the floorboards.

The entire frame.

A jolt. A tilt.

Like something had picked it up—then turned it slightly off-axis.

And then the screaming started.

My voice.

From every direction.

From the walls.

From the vents.

From the phone that wasn’t there.

Begging.

Crying.

Breaking.

I ran for the front door.

Tried to open it.

But it fought me.

The handle stuck. The hinges groaned. The frame held fast.

The phone rang.

3:33 AM.

One last time.

And I...

I answered.

I shouldn’t have.

But I did.

The door burst open.

The wind howled.

And everything went dark.

News Report – Two Days Later

“Investigators are continuing to search for the missing individual last seen entering their home alone on the night of the 14th. Neighbors reported hearing strange noises. Inside, officers discovered significant structural damage, unexplained breakage, and enough blood to confirm the victim’s death. No body was found. No forced entry. No usable footage. The only clue? A shattered landline phone lying on the hallway floor, its receiver dangling off the hook. Authorities refuse to comment further.”

Aftermath

The officers who once rolled their eyes at the reports were the first to crack.

One began sleepwalking into traffic. Another was found curled beneath his desk, weeping into the receiver of a phone that hadn’t rung in years. When questioned, he said only:

“It won’t stop calling.”

He couldn’t remember who they were.

The journalist who aired the mocking segment vanished a week after the broadcast. CCTV caught her arriving home. The next morning, her door was locked from the inside—but she was gone. Her phone rang throughout the investigation.

It wasn’t plugged in.

The neighbors didn’t escape either.

The family across the street fled in the middle of the night. Doors ajar. Lights on. Baby photos still taped to the fridge. A grocery delivery driver found the home empty and reeking of ozone and static. They never came back. No one asked where they’d gone.

The woman next door—who used to joke about “ghost calls”—won’t enter any room with a phone. She was found barefoot in the snow, whispering that the walls had learned to speak.

She hasn’t used her voice since.

A teenager from down the block livestreamed a dare: knock on the door at 3:33 AM. The screen froze mid-laugh. His parents found his phone shattered beneath the bed.

He hasn’t left the house since.

And the house?

It still sits there, rotting at the edge of the block. Lawn overgrown. Windows boarded. Curtains missing. Dark even in daylight.

The townspeople avoid it now. But sometimes—always at 3:33 AM—the ring cuts through the quiet.

No one answers.

No one can.

Because none of them remember the one who lived there.

Not their name. Not their face.

Only the voice.

The voice that slips through the vents. Echoes from unplugged phones. Cracks through the static of detuned radios.

A voice screaming help me in the tone of a person they all once ignored.

A voice that sounds like it knows who they are.

Even if they no longer remember who they were.

And no matter how many times they cover their ears... it always finds a way to call again.

If your phone ever rings at 3:33 AM, don’t answer. And if you do—never speak.