You've likely heard at some point or another that silence, true silence, is deafening. If you haven't experienced this firsthand, it's hard to actually imagine. Picture yourself in a moss-scarred cave, barely able to see, allocating every ounce of effort into your other senses in hopes of holding onto some semblance of sanity. Waiting for a sound — any sound at all — to break the stasis around you, to remind you which of your fears are real, and which ones are imagined. The absence of noise starts off as a light pressure on your eardrums. At a nearly imperceptible rate, this silence amplifies, slithering in and around you until it feels like it's crushing your skull like the jaws of an unseen vice. Keep that feeling with you, stay with me for a few minutes. This is the only way I can think of to explain what's happening to me each time I pick up the phone. My husband and I found one another as young explorers. Caves, mountains, cities — we viewed anywhere as an adventure to spelunk, conquer, chart, to make the world less horribly unknowable. That pessimism was the way he viewed the world. We found harmony because I was ever the optimistic, the more spiritual of the two of us. He laughed at my passing interest in astrology, seers, fortune tellers, and the like, but never unkindly. Now more than ever, I wish I had been more like him. After ten years together, we never ceased our adventures. We did, however, become careless. We were in a cavern, deep underground, idiotically far from anyone we knew. Just the way we liked it. Our hearts pounded with that wildly addictive mix of fear and excitement as we descended further and further. The natural light dwindled as we willingly let the darkness swallow us. I should have done more research. I should have scouted ahead. There were many things I wish I'd had the foresight to do. Instead, the walls caved in around us, a stone esophagus crushing our gear, some bones, and most importantly, our lights, and I lost him. After a minute of chaos and confusion, I blindly reached for the pain I felt in my leg, accidentally wrenching on exposed bone. At least, I think I did. I passed out for God knows how long. When I stirred, panic set in as I realized I had no way to find him. I called out, hearing only my own voice echoing back in mockery. There was no other sound. No dripping moisture from stalactites, no sliding of stones, and the worst of all, no response from my love. I searched. I swear I did the best I could. I crawled with my shattered body, clawing at the dirt until each finger was a bloody stump. The silence consumed me and I felt my mind slipping. I hoped he was trapped somewhere, and in a rising panic decided the only thing I could do was drag myself out and come back with help. Somehow, I did exactly that. Elbow by elbow, I inched my way out of that damned hole, the skin splitting on my forearms. Hours later, I arrived at a nearby camp. The last thing I remember was the way the campers looked at me in horror. Before I fell unconscious, I could see on their faces that looked even worse than I felt, a disgusting hybrid of re-animated corpse and crushed snail. The search parties never found anything more than blood. But it was enough blood that we knew my love was gone. That was last year. I’ll never walk again, my adventuring days are gone. And yet my mind is still in that cave. The little bit I got to keep is fractured, searching for any way to talk to him, to beg for forgiveness for leaving him dying or dead in the dark. I’ve tried therapy. Each and every therapist tells me it’s not my fault, that I have the power to forgive myself. But they don’t know what it was like, knowing he was only feet away and I couldn’t drag him out with me. They’ve cycled me through God knows how many drugs and still the guilt remains. In my desperation, I turned to a medium in a last-ditch effort to talk to my love. He’d think me silly for turning to my old ways, but I needed to talk to him one last time. Even if this medium was a scam artist taking advantage of forlorn people like me, I convinced myself that whatever they faked would be therapeutic, a spiritual placebo. After wheeling myself across town to the medium’s home, I handed her an embarrassing amount of cash and answered a few questions before she led me to a large room in the back. This chamber was theatrical, the walls adorned with objects I’m sure she’d claim were cursed: shrunken heads, nightmarish paintings, books bound in (hopefully simulated) skin. In the center of the room, there was a turquoise rotary phone, faded and chipped over the years, likely due to her using it as a prop. The medium sat down and I rolled across from her, the phone sitting between us. I noticed that the phone wasn’t connected to a landline — no wires sprawled out from the device, and I quickly glanced under the table to scan for any signs of deception. I found nothing aside from the medium’s knowing grin when I resurfaced, a look that told me she was accustomed to doubt, that it came with the job and she was altogether unconcerned. “So, you would like to speak to your husband one last time?” she asked plainly. “Yes. I need to tell him I’m sorry, that I miss him, that I tried to help him, that I love him, that I hope I was right and there’s an afterlife and that we can adventure for eternity,” I replied. If it seemed rehearsed, that’s only because I had been anxiously anticipating this event for weeks. “And are you…concerned…that he’ll blame you? That he won’t…accept your apology? That he’s in hell, that he would listen to you only long enough to drag you down with him and torture you for eternity for allowing him to die?” she demanded, stressing odd syllables in a way that didn’t seem quite right. I stared back at her, eyes wide, shocked. Buried deep down within, I think I knew that my love would forgive me and that I was blaming myself for something that I really had no control over. Perhaps with more therapy I could have reached that moment and really, truly believed it, but now the medium had sown seeds of doubt in the soil of my gut. “N-no, not at all, he wouldn’t do that. It was an accident,” I stammered in reply. “Is that so? There’s nothing you could have done to have helped him?” she prodded, sweat beading on her furrowed brow. “This isn’t right. I didn’t come here to be reprimanded by a hack playing fortune teller,” I spat back at her, starting to turn my chair away when — The rotary phone rang. “If you truly believe he’ll forgive you, answer the phone. If you do not, I suggest you do not. You’ve invited powerful forces into your life, and they will torment you if they detect even a moment of doubt,” the medium shouted hoarsely, struggling to be heard over the increasingly loud ringing. Tears welled in my eyes and snakes twisted in my stomach. This was all wrong. The air felt electric, and something smelled like it was burning. And even with all of those warning signs, I picked up the phone. “...Hello?” I asked in a whisper, wanting to cry, to scream, to stand on shattered legs and run away. I waited for a response, the room dead quiet. All I could hear was a light static, enough to know that this was indeed a real call, that the phone was somehow functioning. “Please…say something.” “....” “He’s….there’s no answer,” I told the medium. She stood up and tore the phone from my hand, slamming the handset back onto the plastic housing.  “You need to leave now,” she told me, glancing at a huge, wicked-looking wrought iron clock on the wall I hadn’t noticed before. “It’s 9:45 PM. Remember that. If you get a call at that time, do not answer it if you have any doubts. You’re already in danger, but if you can answer him and truly believe you are not at fault, there’s a chance you’ll make it through this.” This made no sense. It was mid-day when I entered her home. But sure enough, as she rolled me out, the sun was gone. “Do not come back,” she said, slamming the door shut.  I was too traumatized to protest, so I went home and sobbed myself to sleep that night. I wasn’t sure how much I believed, but the whole event left me feeling raw, like I had exposed my heart to a stranger and they drove a nail through it. That next day, it was easier and easier with each passing minute to believe the medium had taken advantage of me in a disgusting way. But each passing minute also meant that 9:45 PM was closer, and I felt the anchor of doubt and shame and guilt weighing me down. When the phone rang at that exact time, I was both horrified and relieved; scared of what lay on the other end of the phone but strangely comforted that this was happening. I prepared to answer, trying to convince myself that it wasn’t my fault, that he’d forgive me, that he’d understand. And yet still remained that undercurrent of doubt. I hoped it was small enough to be imperceptible. I reached for the phone and answered. “...Hello? Please, are you there?” Just like before, I heard the static and nothing else. Even that static seemed to ebb away as I listened as hard as I could, hoping to find him in that darkness. I closed my eyes and felt myself broken once again in that cave, sure he was near but impossible to find. With that sense memory came the silence, pulling me apart as every sound in my house faded away.  Did I want to hear him? Would that help, or would that push me over the edge? What if he really could talk to me again, but he didn’t forgive me? And so this continued for a week. Every night I would answer, half-hoping to hear him. But last night everything changed.  Like demonic clockwork, the phone rang at 9:45 PM. I answered it one last time, and began bearing my soul, vomiting my thoughts out all at once: “Hello? Please. Please tell me it’s you. I’m so sorry. I wish we had never gone on that trip. I wish you were still here. I loved — no, still love — you so much. This is all my fault, I should have tried harder, it’s not fair, I wish I had died in there with you, o-or, I…wish...you could take my place, that it was my body down there, rotting alone in the silent dark—” And finally, my husband replied in a horrid, smiling voice that was his but wasn’t, that felt like the buzzing of flies and the lick of flames and the stomach stab of guilt. “...That can be arranged.”