The Caller on Line Two

I’ve hosted the graveyard shift on WVXR for eight long years. “After Midnight with Chuck Vale.” They call it public radio, but really it’s just me, a creaky studio in a converted warehouse on the edge of Charleston, and whatever lost souls are still awake in the hills of West Virginia. Truckers rolling down I-64, insomniacs staring at water-stained ceilings, widows who talk to their dead husbands through the static. I’ve heard it all—ghost stories that turn out to be raccoons in the attic, conspiracy rants about chemtrails over the Kanawha River, lonely hearts confessing sins they’d never tell in daylight.

Most nights I love the quiet strangeness of it. Tonight, though, the rain was different. It wasn’t the usual gentle patter. It sounded like a heartbeat thumping impatiently on the studio window, demanding to be let in. The red “On Air” light hummed steadily above the console, casting everything in a bloody glow. My coffee had gone cold hours ago.

At 2:17 a.m., I leaned into the mic, keeping my voice warm and steady like always.

“Welcome back to After Midnight. You’re not alone out there, West Virginia. The lines are open if something’s keeping you up. What’s weighing on your soul tonight?”

The call screener, Jess—our lone overnight producer—spoke softly in my headphones. “Line 2. Guy says his name is Edgar. Sounds… off. Tense. Like he’s whispering secrets to himself. You want him?”

I shrugged, rolling my shoulders. “Put him through. We’ve had worse.”

A click. Then silence. Not the usual dead air, but a heavy, breathing silence. I could hear the man inhaling sharply, as if gathering courage or trying not to scream.

“Hello?” I said gently. “You’re live on After Midnight with Chuck Vale. Go ahead, Edgar. The night is yours.”

He didn’t speak right away. When he did, his voice was low, precise, almost unnaturally calm at first—like a man reading from an old, well-worn script he knew by heart.

“I… I need to tell someone. Before it drives me completely mad. You understand, don’t you? I must tell the whole thing. They say I’m mad, but I am not mad. I am not mad!”

The intensity rose on that last repetition. I glanced at the clock. Plenty of time before the next break. “Alright, Edgar. Take your time. We’re listening. What’s been troubling you?”

He let out a short, dry laugh that sent a faint chill down my spine. “Troubling me. Yes. That’s one way to put it.”

Another pause. The rain drummed harder. I waited. In radio, silence can be gold if the story is worth it.

“I loved the old man,” he began. His diction was oddly formal, like someone from another century who’d wandered into our phone lines. “I loved him. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture—a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees—very gradually—I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.”

I felt the small hairs on my arms lift. This wasn’t the usual drunk caller or conspiracy guy. There was a theatrical quality, but beneath it pulsed something genuine and feverish.

“You’re telling me you killed a man because of his eye?” I asked, careful to keep my tone neutral and non-judgmental. FCC rules were one thing, but I’d learned long ago not to dismiss callers outright. Sometimes they just needed to be heard.

“Yes!” he hissed, passion breaking through the control. “You see? Even you doubt. But hear me out, Chuck. Hear me, and judge for yourselves, all you listeners out there in the dark. I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it—oh, so gently! I put in my head slowly, very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man’s sleep. It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ha! Would a madman have been so wise?”

His breathing had quickened. I could almost picture him in some dim room, eyes wide, phone clutched tight.

“I did this for seven long nights,” he continued. “But on the eighth… on the eighth night, I was more than usually cautious in opening the door. The old man’s hour had come. I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening. The old man sprang up in bed, crying out—‘Who’s there?’ I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed listening.”

The studio lights seemed to dim slightly, or maybe it was just my imagination. Jess buzzed in my ear: “This guy is intense. You good?”

I nodded to myself and kept going. “What happened next, Edgar?”

His voice dropped to a whisper. “I heard a groan. It was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief—oh, no!—it was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him, although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him.”

He paused, and in that gap I heard it—the faint, wet sound of him licking his lips.

“Then I opened the lantern cautiously—oh, so cautiously—cautiously. A thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. It was open—wide, wide open—and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness—all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones. But I could see nothing else of the old man’s face or person, for I had directed the ray as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot.”

His tone shifted, becoming almost triumphant. “And then—then I heard the beating of the heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage. But even yet I refrained and kept still. The old man’s hour had come. With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room. He shrieked once—once only. In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done.”

I swallowed. The rain outside sounded like applause now, or maybe mockery. “Edgar… this is a powerful story. Is this something that actually happened to you, or are you sharing a piece of fiction with us tonight?”

“It happened,” he said, voice flat and certain. “I killed him. I examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more.”

He described the cleanup in meticulous, almost loving detail—the dismembering, the hiding of the body beneath the floorboards, the clever replacement of the planks so that no eye could detect anything amiss. “There was nothing to wash out—no stain of any kind—no blood-spot whatever. I had been too wary for that. A tub had caught all—ha! ha!”

Then the police arrived. Three officers at the door. He welcomed them with perfect calm, showed them every corner of the house, even led them to the old man’s chamber and sat upon the very spot where the body lay buried. “I was singularly at ease,” he said, pride creeping in. “My manner had convinced them. I brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.”

The story built like a wave. His voice grew tighter, faster.

“The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. But then… the noise began.”

“What noise?” I asked, though I already suspected.

“A low, dull, quick sound—such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I talked more fluently to get rid of the feeling, but it grew louder. I paced the floor—but it grew louder. They chatted pleasantly and smiled. Was it possible they heard it not? Almighty God!—no, no! They heard! They suspected! They knew! They were making a mockery of my horror! This I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! And now—again!—hark! Louder! Louder! Louder! Louder!”

His voice exploded into a shriek that made me yank one headphone away. “Villains! Dissemble no more! I admit the deed!—tear up the planks! Here, here!—it is the beating of his hideous heart!”

The line went silent.

I sat stunned, heart hammering against my ribs. The rain continued its impatient tattoo on the glass. For several long seconds, the only sound on air was my own uneven breathing.

“Wow,” I finally said, forcing a professional chuckle as I leaned back into the mic. “That was one hell of a story, Edgar. Listeners, if you’re just joining us, we had a caller delivering a chilling, very Poe-inspired tale of guilt and paranoia. Edgar, if you’re still listening, thank you for sharing that with us. Feel free to call back anytime. We’re here all night.”

I faded his line and rolled into a song—“Mad World” by Gary Jules felt eerily perfect. My hands trembled slightly as I adjusted the levels. I’d had intense callers before—people claiming to be haunted by Civil War ghosts in the mountains, or others confessing to affairs that never happened. But this one lingered. The way his voice had spiraled, the raw panic at the end… it felt too authentic.

Jess buzzed in. “Chuck, that was wild. Want me to block the number?”

“Yeah,” I muttered. “Block it. Something about that one felt… off.”

I stepped out of the booth for a moment, splashing cold water on my face in the tiny bathroom. The station hallway was dim and empty, the fluorescent lights buzzing like distant insects. When I returned, the red light was still glowing even though I hadn’t hit the switch yet. I told myself it was a glitch.

Fifteen minutes later, the trucker on Line 3 was complaining about diesel prices when Jess cut in urgently: “Chuck… Line 2 again. Same guy. Different number. He says the heart won’t stop beating. Sounds worse. Really bad.”

I hesitated, then nodded. Curiosity, that old radio devil, won again. “Put him through.”

The breathing was back—ragged, wet, desperate, like a man drowning on dry land.

“Chuck,” he whispered hoarsely. “It’s still here. I can hear it even now. Even after I hung up. It followed me through the phone lines. Into my room. Under the floorboards of my own mind.”

“Edgar,” I said, keeping my voice calm and steady, the way you talk to someone on a ledge. “Maybe you should talk to someone. A counselor, a doctor. This guilt—or whatever this is—sounds like it’s tearing you apart.”

He laughed, that same broken, humorless sound. “Doctors? They would lock me away with the madmen. But you… you understand the night. You sit there in your little lighted booth while the world sleeps, listening to voices no one else wants to hear. You know what it is to listen to things that should not be heard.”

The rain lashed the window harder. Thunder rolled over the hills.

“Tell me what’s happening right now,” I said.

“I tore up the planks again,” he murmured. “In my memory. In my nightmare. But the sound is louder. It’s under my own bed now. Thump… thump… thump. Don’t you hear it? Even through the radio? It’s coming through your speakers, isn’t it? The whole state is listening now. West Virginia knows my secret.”

I listened hard. All I heard was the rain and the low electronic hum of the equipment.

“No, Edgar. I don’t hear anything but you. But I believe it feels very real to you.”

“Liar!” he snarled suddenly. “You hear it! Everyone hears it now. The old man’s eye is open in the dark, watching me through the microphone. And the heart… it beats for me. It beats louder because I told you. Because thousands are listening in their cars, in their beds, in the dark. They all know!”

His voice climbed again, spiraling toward hysteria. “Dissemble no more! It is the beating of his hideous heart! It is! It is! It is!”

The line cut dead.

I killed the mic, switched to a safe instrumental track, and ripped off my headphones. Sweat had beaded on my forehead despite the chill in the studio. My own heart was pounding so violently I could feel it in my ears, in my teeth.

Jess sounded worried. “Chuck? The number went dead again. Like it was disconnected mid-scream. You okay in there?”

“Yeah,” I lied. “Just a weird night. Let’s take a few more calls.”

But the rhythm of the show felt broken. The next caller, a woman worried about her missing cat, sounded distant and unreal. I went through the motions, but my mind kept drifting back to Edgar’s voice, to that building crescendo of terror.

At 3:33 a.m., during a song break, I noticed it for the first time.

A sound.

Low. Dull. Quick.

Like a watch wrapped in cotton.

It seemed to come from the monitors, faint beneath the music. I adjusted the levels, but it persisted—steady, insistent. Thump. Thump. Thump.

I told myself it was feedback. Or the rain. Or my own pulse playing tricks after that intense call.

But as the night wore on, the sound didn’t fade. It grew subtly louder during quiet moments. When I leaned back in my chair between calls, I could hear it clearly through the headphones even when no one was on the line.

At 4:15 a.m., with the rain finally easing, I did something I rarely do. I spoke directly to the empty air.

“Edgar… if you’re still out there listening somewhere… I hope you find some peace tonight. The heart doesn’t have to beat forever. Sometimes we just need to forgive ourselves.”

No response, of course. Just the rain tapering off and that faint, relentless thump underneath everything.

I signed off as the first gray light crept over the mountains. “This is Chuck Vale, saying good morning to West Virginia. You made it through another night. Remember—you’re not alone.”

I powered down the console, but the sound followed me as I locked up the studio. Down the hallway. Into my car.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

By the time I reached my apartment on the edge of Teays Valley, the sun was up, but the sound was still there—soft, patient, waiting beneath the floorboards of my mind. I lay in bed with the curtains drawn, eyes wide open, listening.

Somewhere out there, in the hills or in the wires, the old man’s heart kept beating.

And now, so did mine.