The Bell

Enjoy this spooky short-short I wrote for Halloween.

Last night, some friends and I were playing D&D together online and one guy’s doorbell starts going nuts, like someone’s just pounding the button.

He’s got one of those new doorbells with a camera in it, so he checks the app. No one there.

We have a good laugh about it, asking him if there’s a flaming bag of poo on the stoop, and he goes and checks and says no.

A few minutes later, it happens again. Again, no one’s on camera.

Now he’s a teacher, so it’s possible his students found out where he lived and were ding-dong-ditching him, being careful to avoid the camera.

So he goes outside, looks all around. Doesn’t find anyone hiding anywhere.

The third time it happens, the chime sounds distorted. We can hear it over his mic, and it’s all warped and weird.

I say it sounds like he needs a new doorbell, and he says he just got this one. Thinks maybe it’s a bad. Says he’s going to take it down and send it back.

He apologizes for all the interruptions and we resume play. It rings again, even more warped and distorted.

So now he’s ready to smash the thing with a hammer. Says he thought he took the batteries out, but goes off to double check.

He’s gone a long time.

When he comes back, his voice is shaking. Says there was someone at the front door this time.

A girl. Covered in grime, her hands and feet stained dark with it.

She wore nothing but a filthy nightgown, maybe a hospital gown. It hadn’t rained for days, but dirty water dripped off the long, black hair hanging over her face.

She lunged at him, snarling.

He says she had rotten teeth and her eyes were milky. He slammed the door on her, locked it, backed away. Heart hammering in his chest.

He doesn’t hear anything. No scratching at the door, no yelling, nothing.

Dead silence.

So he looks out the peephole and she’s gone. He goes to a window that he can sorta see the porch from, and there’s no sign of her.

Not even a puddle on the stoop where she’d been dripping.

Well, that’s it for the game, obviously. We just sit around talking about it after that, trying to talk him down.

Was it a student? No, he says, he never saw her before.

Someone says he should call the cops. And get shot? Fuck no, he says.

One of the ladies says he’s pulling our leg, made the whole thing up. He says shit, fam, that for real just happened.

I’m sitting there thinking, do I believe him? And decide I do.

I mean, he’s great at roleplaying, but he’d have to be an Oscar-level actor to fake the terror we heard in his voice. The man was legit scared, you ask me.

And that’s why I’ll never buy a Ring doorbell.