Mysterious Awakening

Every set of eyes in the room was riveted on Miles.

The room, filled with the sound of a high-pitched phone ringing, was a classroom within a school. Miles was in the midst of dialing a number, and before anyone had the chance to ask what was happening, he abruptly ended the call. His face twisted in an expression of fear that was highly unusual for him.

“Miles, wh-what’s going on?” William managed to get the words out, although they tumbled out more as a stammer than a coherent question.

Fear visibly gripped William’s body, echoing the fear that had transformed Miles. “Please, don’t scare us like this,” he pleaded. “We depend on you. To see you so unnerved… it’s disconcerting. Can you smile for us? Show us that confident grin you always have when you’re in control. We need something to hold onto.”

The group had grown accustomed to Miles’s steady demeanor and his talent for navigating tricky situations. Seeing him lose his cool was a shock to their collective confidence.

A whirlpool of emotions seemed to sweep across Miles’s face. As everyone held their breath, waiting for him to say something, the sharp sound of an incoming call broke the tense silence.

“Beep, beep.”

His eyes quickly flicked to the caller ID, his pupils narrowing. The display read: 138 – the identical number that Thunder King had posted in the online forum.

The mystery caller was making a return call.

“This must be a trap, a terrifying trap,” Miles muttered between gritted teeth, his voice a mix of anger and fear.

“Beep, beep.”

The insistent beeping of the phone continued, but Miles was adamant about not answering. He was convinced that the entity making the call was not human, and the idea of interacting with it filled him with an unspeakable terror.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of refusing to respond, the phone fell silent. The call had been disconnected.

The silence was, however, short-lived.

“Ding, ding, ding.”

“I love you, I love you, just as a mouse loves rice.”

“The cool moonlight turns my longing for you into a river.”

An array of ringtones echoed throughout the room as the other students’ phones began to ring in unison. Each person glanced at their phones, their eyes wide with fear as they saw the same incoming call display: 138.

“Miles, look at this.”

Coral, Grace, and the others held up their phones, the incoming call clearly visible on their screens. Their eyes were wide with apprehension.

“Don’t answer it,” Miles ordered, his face set in a stern expression.

The group nodded in unison, understanding the ominous nature of the incoming calls.

William, who had earlier given his phone to Miles, looked stunned as he stared at everyone’s screens. “This is… unbelievable,” he stammered. “How can a single number call more than ten phones simultaneously?”

“Mine isn’t from that number. It’s showing as Teacher Wang’s mobile number,” interjected a classmate named Qian Wanhao. Without considering the potential consequences, he picked up the call.

“Have you completely lost your senses, Qian Wanhao?” Peter shouted in disbelief. “We specifically told you not to answer!”

“Why are you getting so upset? It’s just a call from Teacher Wang,” Qian Wanhao retorted, his voice filled with logic, “Perhaps he’s here to save us.”

“End the call. Right now!” Miles’s eyes narrowed dangerously as he sprang forward, aiming to seize the phone from Qian Wanhao and terminate the call himself.

The notion of a call from Teacher Wang was, if anything, more terrifying. After all, he was the first to go missing in the haunted area. How could he possibly be alive when all others had met their end?

As anticipated, there was no voice on the other end of Qian Wanhao’s call, only the crackling sound of electrical static. Teacher Wang was notably silent.

The next sound that reverberated through the phone caused Miles’s spine to freeze in a paralyzing chill.

“Thud, thud-thud.”

The noise was a series of knocks, an uncanny echo of the menacing knocks they had previously heard outside their classroom – each one heavy and oppressive, as if physically stealing their breath away.

It was only then that the seriousness of the situation dawned on Qian Wanhao. His face paled to an ashen hue, and his hand trembled uncontrollably, causing him to lose his grip on the phone. As it crashed onto the floor, the screen shattered, yet the chilling call disturbingly persisted.

“Thud, thud-thud.”

The spine-chilling sound once again filled the room.

“Thud, thud-thud.”

With swift movement, Miles rushed forward, snatching the fallen phone from the floor and promptly ending the call.

“Qian Wanhao, if you have a death wish, don’t drag us down with you!” William, his voice filled with both anger and fear, seized Qian Wanhao’s collar, his angry outburst betraying his deep terror. He had no knowledge of the full consequences of answering the call, but he was certain they would be catastrophic.

“There’s indeed a frightening truth about having reckless teammates versus having formidable enemies,” William grumbled under his breath. “At critical points, there’s always some fool stepping up, risking not just their own lives but also the lives of others. Qian Wanhao, your misguided courage makes me want to strangle you. Despite nine years of compulsory education, I’ve never come across someone as spectacularly stupid.”

“Was the old man knocking outside your grandfather?” William derided. “If you’re so attached to him, why don’t you plead with him to spare us?”

“I… I didn’t intend to,” Qian Wanhao whimpered, his eyes welling up with tears like a frightened child. “It displayed the teacher’s name. I wouldn’t have answered if it were from anyone else.”

“So, you’d answer if it was the teacher? If the teacher asked you to die, would you?” Another classmate, Peter, was so frustrated that he felt like striking Qian Wanhao.

“Enough,” Miles interjected firmly. “This isn’t the time. We’re all at fault here. I should have warned you better. We can’t afford internal squabbles in a crisis like this.”

The room fell into a deathly silence.

“Miles, what would have happened if we’d answered the call?” Grace asked, her voice trembling with anxiety.

Miles responded, his tone grave, “What else? Your dear grandfather would soon pay us a visit, keen for a little chit-chat.”

Everyone in the room gasped, their eyes widening with a blend of shock and terror.

Indeed, it was a dreadful certainty that the old man would have shown up. The knocking sound transmitted via the phone had a petrifying capacity – it had the power to summon him. The repercussions of this were terrifyingly obvious.

Miles clutched his phone tightly, reflecting on a message posted by Thunder King on the forum.

“This is a trap, the entire scenario set out on the forum is a trap. Thunder King experienced the old man knocking at his door while he was alone at home. Given our experiences in this classroom, each knock on a door resulted in a fatality. However, Thunder King’s house had two doors – the front door and his room door.”

“Meaning, Thunder King was already a goner after the knock on the first door. The ensuing narrative on the forum couldn’t have been his doing. The phone number and the audio files weren’t his handiwork either. Only one entity could be responsible for all of this.”

“A ghost!”

Miles blurted out, pausing momentarily to steady his frantic heartbeats with deep breaths.

Indeed, the initial entries on the forum were created by a living Thunder King. But by the end, he had already succumbed to his fate. The entity that continued to post was undeniably a ghost.

To confirm his suspicion, Miles opened the forum page again, scrolling down to the final posts.

Just as he had theorized, the evidence was compelling. The last few responses were riddled with typographical errors, strikingly different from Thunder King’s earlier posts. Additionally, there was a noticeable half-hour gap between the posting times.

It was a curse, spread by a vengeful spirit.

Anyone who listened to the knocking sound would be targeted by the old man.

Upon this realization, all the events that had occurred until now seemed to align.

“If the knocking is heard virtually, for example, on the internet or through the phone, the old man will track you down, as if you’ve been pinpointed by invisible coordinates. But, if you hear the knocking in the real world, it’s the end of the road. Why didn’t the old man show up when I played the audio file in the restroom though?”

As Miles wrestled with this conundrum, beads of cold sweat trickled down his forehead.

He endeavored to decipher the old man’s pattern and methods of killing, hoping to formulate a strategy for survival.