The Payphone at the Dead End

My first month in the city, I shared a cramped flat with a woman named Mira. We were both fresh out of college, working at a tech firm that swallowed our daylight hours. Our flat sat at the end of a long, winding lane, a dead end that smelled of damp concrete and rotting leaves. To reach the main road, you had to trace a crooked path around three sharp corners, each turn feeling like it led you further into a maze. And at the end of that maze, under a flickering streetlamp, stood a solitary payphone, its metal casing scarred with rust and graffiti.

Mira had a boyfriend back in Mumbai, and every evening she would leave the flat, her steps echoing on the cracked pavement, to make her call. She would be gone for an hour, sometimes two. I never thought much of it until one night, she returned with a strange, distant look in her eyes. When I asked if something was wrong, she said, ‘The phone booth – it feels different tonight. Like something was watching me from the trees.’ I laughed it off, attributing it to her usual dramatic tendencies.

But the next evening, she didn’t come back at all. I waited until midnight, then called the police. They searched the lane, the payphone, the surrounding bushes, but found nothing. No signs of struggle, no witnesses. Just the payphone, its receiver dangling off the hook, as if she had been in the middle of a call when something pulled her away.

I was questioned, of course, but they had no leads. The case went cold. I couldn’t sleep. I kept replaying her words, the way she had described the phone booth. I decided to investigate myself. I took the same route she always took, past the three corners, my heart pounding with each step. When I reached the payphone, I noticed something I had missed before: a small, faded sticker on the side of the phone, barely visible under layers of dirt. It read, ‘Call for a voice from the other side.’ A prank, I thought, but something about it made my skin crawl.

I picked up the receiver. There was a dial tone, but as I went to hang up, I heard a faint, static-laced whisper. ‘Mira?’ I said, half in fear, half in hope. The static grew louder, and then a voice, distorted and hollow, answered, ‘She’s here, but she can’t speak. She’s buried where the shadows bend.’ I dropped the phone and ran back to the flat, the sound of my footsteps chasing me.

That night, I didn’t sleep. I went back to the payphone, this time with a flashlight and a small shovel I’d found in the flat’s broom closet. I shone the light around the base of the phone, and there, in the patch of earth behind it, I saw a slight mound, as if the ground had been disturbed. I began to dig, the soil cold and damp against my fingers. After a few minutes, my shovel hit something soft. I brushed away the dirt and found a hand – Mira’s hand, her wedding ring glinting in the flashlight beam. She was right there, buried beneath the dead end, her body twisted and her face frozen in a scream.

I called the police again, and they excavated the site. They found Mira’s body, but also others – shallow graves of four other women, all missing from the same lane over the past decade. The payphone, it turned out, had been a lure. Someone had been using it to stalk and kill. The police set up a stakeout, but the killer was never caught. The payphone was removed, and the lane was sealed off.

I left the city a week later, but I couldn’t escape the memory. And sometimes, when I hear a phone ring, I’m transported back to that dead end, seeing Mira’s hand reaching up from the earth, and I wonder if the killer is still out there, waiting for another desperate caller to take the bait. The payphone is gone, but in my nightmares, it’s always there, its dial tone humming like a hungry insect, ready to summon another voice from the other side.