Evelyn still hears sirens in her sleep — even though the headset’s been silent for years.
She tells herself the calls she answers now aren’t real.
But tonight, a young voice breaks through the static… begging for help.
Something in her bones says this isn’t a prank.
And deep down, she knows: some ghosts don’t stay buried forever.
PART 1 — The Old Frequency
Evelyn Monroe hadn’t worked a dispatch console in seven years, but her hands still knew the shape of the headset like it was yesterday.
The tiny receiver sat on her kitchen table in rural Lancaster, Pennsylvania — tethered not to any station but to a dusty old scanner she’d refused to throw out. Every night, after she fed the barn cats and locked up the back porch, she sat in her wooden chair, slipping on the headset like a priest might don a stole — with muscle memory, with reverence.
She missed the voices. The ones that used to flood in — scared, angry, broken, desperate — and the sound of her own voice cutting through the noise. Confident. Controlled. Calm.
She missed feeling needed.
Now, all she had was silence… and ghosts.
Her husband, Carl, had passed four winters ago. Pancreatic cancer — fast and cruel. Their only daughter, Marissa, lived two states over in Ohio with her own brood and hadn’t visited since the funeral. Evelyn stopped calling after the third Thanksgiving invitation went unanswered.
She filled the void with fake calls. Pretend scenarios, pieced together from memories of her three-decade career at the Lancaster County Emergency Communications Center. A house fire on Sycamore. A boy choking on a marble. A woman hiding in the bathroom whispering for help. All made up. All just… echoes.
But tonight felt different.
Evelyn stirred her tea — decaf, two sugars — and turned the scanner dial ever so slightly to the left, where the old emergency band sometimes fuzzed to life. She closed her eyes. Listened.
Click… hiss… pop.
A low frequency crackled, then fell quiet.
She sighed, reaching for her quilt, when—
“—is anyone there?”
Her fingers froze mid-air.
The voice was faint, fragile, crackling like a bad tape. But it was real.
“Please… someone help me. I don’t know where I am.”
The tea cup rattled as Evelyn sat up straight, her dispatcher instincts kicking in like a defibrillator to the chest. She adjusted the headset, twisted the volume knob.
“This is Evelyn Monroe. Can you hear me?” Her voice trembled, unused to its old command.
A pause. Then static. Then…
“I think… I think he’s coming back.”
Her breath caught.
“Stay with me, sweetheart,” Evelyn said. “What’s your name?”
“…Jamie,” the voice replied, barely audible. “I don’t have much time.”
Evelyn’s mind raced. Could this be some kid playing on a walkie? A trucker’s prank? But her gut said no. There was something too raw, too shaken about the voice.
“Jamie, can you tell me anything about where you are? Any street signs, sounds, smells?”
“I don’t… It’s dark. It smells like… oil. Metal. Like a garage maybe. I’m tied up.”
A chill crawled down Evelyn’s spine.
She reached for a notepad — the one she kept near the scanner, out of habit — and jotted it down: Jamie. Garage. Tied. Sounds scared.
Her hands moved like old metronomes, slow but steady.
“What does it sound like outside, Jamie? Cars? People?”
“Nothing. Just… wind. I think we’re far from town.”
Evelyn swallowed hard.
“Okay, Jamie. I believe you. I need you to stay as quiet as you can and keep talking to me. We’ll figure this out together, alright?”
“Okay,” the voice whispered. “Please don’t hang up.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
Evelyn’s eyes flicked toward the clock — 11:47 PM. Too late to call local authorities with such little intel. And what would she even say? That an old woman with a scanner headset picked up a phantom call from a child tied up in a mystery garage?
Her fingers gripped the pencil tighter.
She needed proof. Something real.
“Jamie,” she said gently, “do you remember how you got there? Anything before this moment?”
Silence.
Then:
“There was… a truck. Red. I think. He said he was gonna help me find my dog.”
Evelyn’s heart snapped like a twig. She wrote that down too. Red truck. Lost dog.
“Do you remember what he looked like?”
“…tall. Smelled like beer. He had a patch on his jacket. A wolf. I think it was a wolf.”
She pressed her lips tight. That felt like a lead.
“Jamie, listen. You are brave. I need you to keep looking around, even with your eyes closed. Anything you can tell me could save you.”
She heard a sharp intake of breath on the other end — the kind that comes right before a scream.
“He’s back.”
Then the line went dead.
Evelyn jerked off the headset and stood up so fast her chair screeched across the floor. Her pulse roared in her ears like the sirens she used to send out for others.
She didn’t know where Jamie was.
She didn’t know if anyone else had heard the call.
But one thing was certain.
Somewhere in the dark, a child was waiting for someone to believe them.
And Evelyn Monroe wasn’t going to let that voice disappear like all the others.
PART 2 – The Voice That Stayed
Evelyn didn’t sleep that night.
She sat in her flannel robe at the kitchen table, headset unplugged, the scanner still humming faintly beside a notebook now full of frantic scribbles: Jamie. Red truck. Wolf patch. Tied up. Garage. Far from town.
She stared at the final line she had written — He’s back.
No response after that. Just dead air.
By sunrise, the sky outside had turned the color of old gauze. Pale and bruised. Her arthritic hands ached, but she flipped open the Yellow Pages she kept beneath the phone. She hadn’t used it in years, but old habits — like old dispatchers — die slow.
She turned to the page marked Radio Equipment and circled two businesses still in operation.
She dialed the first one, gripping the phone like it could leak truth through the cord.
“Benny’s Comms,” a man answered, voice gravelly with morning.
“This is Evelyn Monroe. I’m calling about a possible signal intercept on an old band — near 460 MHz.”
A pause.
“You a ham operator?”
“Former dispatcher. Retired. I picked up a voice last night. A child. Said they were tied up somewhere.”
The man sighed. “Scanner frequencies been quieter than church since we went digital. You sure you didn’t catch a looped radio drama or a pirate feed?”
She didn’t answer immediately. Then she said, “I know the difference between make-believe and a kid begging for help.”
The man hesitated, then softened. “Alright. You got a recording?”
“No. Just notes.”
“Well, maybe try the local PD. Or the township firehouse. If it’s real, someone else would’ve caught something.”
She hung up.
But her gut told her the opposite — no one else had caught it. That frequency was so narrow, so outdated, it was barely alive. Like Jamie.
She didn’t have much, but she had time. And one other thing most people forgot she had: connections.
Evelyn pulled out her weathered Rolodex — most of the names now dead or retired. But tucked near the back was a card smudged from too much handling: Detective Mason “Mace” Caldwell. They’d worked together a dozen times during the ‘90s, back when she was sharper and he still had hair.
She picked up the phone again.
“Lancaster Police,” a young woman answered.
“Put me through to Mace Caldwell.”
A beat.
“Ma’am, Detective Caldwell retired five years ago—”
“Then give me his number. Tell him Evelyn Monroe’s calling. He’ll pick up.”
She heard the click-clack of keys. A reluctant sigh. And then, a number read aloud.
She didn’t hesitate.
Mace picked up on the third ring. “Yeah?”
“Mace. It’s Evelyn. You still breathing?”
“Evelyn?” His voice cracked with surprise. “I figured you’d be sipping wine on some porch by now, yelling at birds.”
“I do that between rescues. I need a favor.”
“Shoot.”
She recounted the whole thing — the voice, the patch, the details. Mace didn’t interrupt once.
“You’re saying this kid got through on an abandoned channel? And described a guy with a wolf patch?”
“Yes. A red truck too. Smelled like beer.”
Mace exhaled. “Damn. That lines up with something from last month — missing kid, rural area, south of Elizabethtown. But we didn’t have enough to go on. Parents thought she ran away.”
“Girl’s name?”
“Jessie. Ten. Gone without a trace. Her beagle was found wandering a mile from the school bus stop.”
Evelyn felt her heart twist.
“Could ‘Jamie’ be ‘Jessie’?”
“Possible. Static can do strange things to syllables. Either way, sounds like someone who wants out.”
Mace paused. “You still have that old receiver?”
“I do. Want to hear for yourself?”
“No, I trust you. Which makes this worse.”
“Why?”
“Because if someone’s using that frequency… they’re hiding in plain sight. Maybe a mechanic. A trucker. Ex-military.”
“And this patch? You ever hear of a gang or club with a wolf emblem?”
“Yeah. Local off-road crew. Used to race illegally out near Horseshoe Pike. Couple got busted for assault back in the day. But nothing recent.”
Evelyn was already reaching for her pad.
“You’re gonna chase this, aren’t you?” Mace said.
“I’m not chasing,” she replied. “I’m listening.”
He laughed bitterly. “Just don’t get yourself hurt. I’ll dig what I can. You do the same.”
When they hung up, Evelyn sat back, closed her eyes, and whispered: “Jamie, I’m not done.”
That evening, she set up the receiver again — boosting it with an old aluminum antenna she’d once used to listen to state troopers back in ’86. She tuned to the same frequency, heart thudding in her chest like a second hand of a clock that never rested.
She waited.
Waited through the static and the dark.
And then—
“Is someone there?”
Her breath hitched.
“I’m here,” she said gently. “Jamie, it’s Evelyn. I didn’t forget you.”
A soft sob came through.
“I was so scared.”
“I know, honey. You’re doing so good. I need you to listen to me. You mentioned a wolf patch. Do you remember what color the jacket was?”
A pause. “Black. With red letters.”
“What did the letters say?”
“I… I think it said ‘Iron Teeth.’”
Evelyn felt her stomach drop.
That name she remembered. A small-time biker club that disbanded after a violent bar fight a decade ago. One of the men, she remembered vaguely — thick beard, drove a red Ford pickup, always reeked of Miller Lite.
Evelyn rose to her feet.
Tomorrow, she would drive to the edge of Elizabethtown, near the junkyards and old racing trails. Somewhere there, she would start knocking on doors. She had a name now. A patch. A truck. A purpose.
But first, she whispered into the headset:
“I believe you, Jamie. And I’m coming.”
