19. Night Call

An elderly paraplegic woman, Elva Keene, receives strange anonymous phone calls in the middle of a stormy night. During the first calls she hears only static. Later she hears a man moaning and she repeatedly demands to know who is calling. The man continues to call and keeps repeating "Hello?" over and over. Finally he says, "Hello? Where are you? I want to talk to you." Elva, terrified, screams at the man to leave her alone.

Elva calls a phone company, who traces the calls to a telephone line that has fallen in a cemetery. Elva and her housekeeper visit the cemetery where she finds that the line is resting on the grave of her long-deceased fiancé, Brian Douglas. Elva says that she always insisted on having her own way, and Brian always did what she said. Brian died in 1932 a week before they were to be married. That day, she insisted on driving, lost control of the car and hit a tree. The accident killed Brian and rendered her paraplegic.

Now that she can talk to him again, she realizes she won't have to be alone. At home, she picks up the phone and calls to Brian's ghost, pleading with him to answer. He replies that she told him to leave her alone and that he always does what she says.The line goes dead, leaving Elva alone and crying in her bed.