Two Weeks Earlier
Emily awoke with a start, air burning her lungs on the way down as she panted, her heart hammering in her chest like a war drum. She brushed her sweaty bangs off her forehead where they clung. The sheets on her bed had tangled themselves around her legs as she'd thrashed during her dream.
She couldn't remember what she'd dreamed about, all she knew was the overwhelming certainty she'd woken with that the phone was ready to be answered. It had been three days since she'd made the outbound call and she had been starting to worry she wasn't going to get a response.
The clock beside her bed said that it was well after two in the morning, but she could still hear the sounds of her mother on the phone from somewhere below her.
Tiptoeing across the floor so as not to let her mother know she was awake, Emily situated herself on the floor of her closet next to the deceptively labelled box that contained the clothes her mother didn't want her wearing. It was a tight fit, crammed between the box and the tiered shelf that held her shoes, clothes hanging over her around her head like unmatched curtains, and she had to fold her knees up under her chin in order to get the door closed most of the way.
The make-shift telephone sat at her feet unopened. She breathed a sigh of relief. The instructions hadn't been clear on what exactly would happen if she found the shoebox open, other than that it was bad. The paper cup hadn't been knocked over, which was also a good sign, although something twisted in her gut with the feeling that it wasn't in the exact position she'd left it.
The desire to hear her unborn child speak to her was too strong for her to resist answering the phone, so she swallowed down the worry and told herself she was imagining things.
She wasn't sure what to expect when she held the paper cup to her ear, feeling more than a little foolish. It probably wasn't even real anyway; she'd been telling herself that since John had told her about playing the game in juvie. She couldn't hear anything at first – just the sound of her mother's demanding voice, presumably dealing with some kind of crisis at the Embassy. Even though she'd almost completely talked herself into believing this all to be some kind of joke, she couldn't help the pang of disappointment.
She was on the verge of giving up and going back to bed when the crying started suddenly, making icy fear plummet into her stomach. It wasn't the kind of crying made by a brand new baby, but the kind of cries a toddler would make. She didn't know why she was afraid.
She flattened her hand against the other ear to block out the sounds coming up through the floor and was able to make out a voice from among the wailing. "Mommy!" A little voice sobbed into her ear as if its very heart were breaking. "Mommy...Mommy, please!"
Emily bit down on her lip to keep any sound from escaping and being heard by her mother's bat-like hearing. If the Ambassador were to find out what she was doing, she'd likely be grounded into the next century. Having grown up in a strict Catholic household, her mother had expressly forbidden Ouija boards and all things dark and demonic. The idea of Emily contacting the spirit of her dead baby would likely cause her mother a heart attack (especially since she still didn't know Emily had been pregnant in the first place).
"Mommy, help me!" the small voice begged, "Help me, please!"
Emily couldn't help the tortured sob that erupted. "I'm sorry..." she whispered, all thoughts of the rules long since forgotten as she listened to her child's heart-rending cries.
The voice changed suddenly as the last syllable fell from her lips. The weeping stopped immediately, replaced instead with mocking laughter. Not the giggle of a small child, but the kind of other-worldly laugh that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.
Her ear started to tingle as if invisible bugs were crawling over and inside it. She yanked the on the thread connecting the paper cup to the shoebox until it snapped, crushing the cup in the process. The laughter continued in her head.
Fear burning through her chest, she took the nearby scissors and cut the thread into four pieces to be sure the connection was severed. Still the laughter continued in her head.
Tears streamed down her face as she pulled her knees against her chest, fear keeping her paralyzed on the floor of the closet. She sunk her teeth into the skin of her knee, afraid that if she let it, the laughter would come spilling out of her head and out of her mouth.