Robert's Song

[00:00:00] Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. For some, the holidays bring a long memory of those that are gone. A time when tragedies seem to hurt us just a little bit more than usual. My name is Edwin, and here's a scary story. Roberts Song.

[00:00:24] I had just started my shift at my dad's shop and it was already going badly. An angry man had just left after coming to me for an issue with his phone line. And all we did at the time was sell and repair cell phones.

[00:00:41] He had paid his bill and was getting charged again, and even though I tried to help him figure it out, for free by the way, he was frustrated the whole time until he turned to cussing me out for asking him to call his service provider.

[00:00:54] The job didn't pay anything. I was just doing my dad a favor while he was out of town for his treatment about 4 hours away, and I was staying at his house. He offered to close a shop for those two days if I couldn't help out, but I couldn't

[00:01:09] say no. Plus, it was my girlfriend's birthday that weekend and even though she was upset, there was only so much she could say to me about it. I would make it up to her. The rest of the day went okay.

[00:01:23] I sold a cell phone and a warranty for it, a couple of phone cases and replacement chargers. A few people stopped by the shop to ask how my dad was doing and nothing more,

[00:01:34] which was nice of them, but I really wanted it to be closing time in order for me to go upstairs. I wanted to order takeout and fall asleep in front of the television, but around 6.40

[00:01:47] I started wondering just how bad it would be if I'd closed down the shop just 20 minutes early. What could happen between then and when the actual time to close rolled by? But with every thought came an opposite one.

[00:02:02] Snapping me back into reality like a river band, thoughts that told me to just be patient. That I had gotten through the hardest part already and that my dad needed the help. I sat back down behind the counter as I watched the crouching silhouette of a woman coming

[00:02:19] up to the front door. I was hoping she would just keep walking, but unfortunately she reached for the door handle and rattled it open. It was an older woman, but her hair dyed red that was closer to purple, a long black skirt

[00:02:37] and glasses hanging from the front of her yellow blouse. She looked at me and smiled before focusing on her steps once again, making sure not to trip over her own feet. Hello, she greeted me while trying to reach for her purse to take out her cell phone.

[00:02:56] After a few seconds she gave up and focused once again on her steps until she got to the counter where I was pretending to be busy with something else while she got there. She told me she had a few problems with her cell phone.

[00:03:10] One of them was that her battery wouldn't last very long. When she told me that it only lasted a day, I explained that cell phones nowadays had more features and used up more battery power than before.

[00:03:24] After some back and forth on her thoughts on how long a battery should last, she accepted that it was fine and came to terms with the fact that she'd have to charge her cell phone every night. The other issue though, that one was a strange one.

[00:03:41] I keep getting a phone call young man. It rings at around two in the morning and it wakes me up. I can't go to sleep easily you see? She explained, later telling me about some of her ailments and her sleeping problems.

[00:03:57] I asked if she had tried to put the phone on silent but she said that she needed it on in case of an emergency. This had sounded a lot like the problem I had with another customer at the start of the day.

[00:04:09] It was an issue with the phone service provider, not with the phone itself. But I took a deep breath and decided to give this old woman a hand with the phone by offering some ideas. I could block the number for her and that's what I offered.

[00:04:26] So we tried that. As I was running through the incoming phone logs, I saw a few phone calls during the day. None with names attached to them but she was right about the middle of the night once. They'd show up at 1.59am consistently every single night.

[00:04:49] The thing was they would all be coming from different numbers. They scrolled down as far as I could for the entire 60 days that the phone kept records for. It was there. Night after night at 1.59am, a phone call.

[00:05:09] Sometimes it would go unanswered and display as a missed call and other times it would show up as an 8 or so second phone call. Do you know who's calling your phone that late? Have you talked to them?

[00:05:25] She explained that nobody would ever answer, that her hearing was also bad and so she couldn't be sure. I thought it was odd but I was convinced that it was a scammer or prank caller.

[00:05:38] But every night for at least the past two months they must have been determined. While we do certain types of repairs, we also provide loaner phones which my dad started offering to certain customers and this woman had known about it because after noticing that

[00:05:57] I was looking at my watch, she cheerfully suggested to leave her phone there overnight and then just give her a loaner phone. She would come back tomorrow once the phone was fixed and then she would let me close up.

[00:06:10] I didn't know how the phone was going to get fixed but honestly I was tired and accepted without making her fill out all of the paperwork required. I simply gave her a flip phone and told her that the phone number was labeled on the back

[00:06:24] of the phone and then to come back for herself on in the morning. She smiled and watched her every step as she worked her way back to the front door. I sighed in relief, accepting that if this woman would just never come back with her

[00:06:40] phone I would just pay my dad for it. I was tired. And so I went upstairs to the living room above the shop and couldn't wait to sit down with a hot pocket and a Diet Coke right in front of the television.

[00:06:55] Dad didn't have cable but there was something comforting about being in that house, sitting on dad's chair after all those years. Again, I flicked on the TV, the evening news were on and the microwave beeped just then.

[00:07:15] I groaned as I got up to grab the hot plate from out of there and then sat down once more. I closed my eyes for just a minute when I heard it. My phone.

[00:07:26] I had forgotten to text my girlfriend that evening and despite her being chill for just about everything, not saying goodnight to her was a surefire way to get her angry. I never understood that but in my head I planned out the speech saying that I was

[00:07:42] in a sleep, that I had been watching something on TV or maybe that I was just about the texture. I'd come up with something on the spot but then I looked at the cell phone screen and it was dark. Dead and yet I could still hear the beeps.

[00:08:04] The ringing of the phone was faint but clear. I stopped breathing just so that I could listen better. That's when I noticed it was coming from the shop downstairs. I was hoping it would stop on its own but it kept going, ringing and ringing until

[00:08:24] I made up my mind to go check it out for myself. The cell phone was on the counter just where I had left it, vibrating near the edge of it and about to fall. Still ringing.

[00:08:38] I could barely see it in the dark mini showroom of the shop but if I flicked on the light switch it would turn everything on and I feared that it would let people know that the shop was

[00:08:48] open even though in my drowsy state it had become clear just how late it was. I walked up to it and grabbed it just before it went off the edge. The number on the screen seemed familiar but it wasn't registered.

[00:09:05] It vibrated in my hand heating up as the numbers themselves seemed to blur on the super bright screen. I pressed a green button to answer and held it up to my ear. Hello? I answered. That's when I heard a song. Clearly it was a piano.

[00:09:29] Soft and hauntingly familiar. It closed my eyes and let the music flood over my head. With every note taking me to the next until all I could hear was a melody that followed every stroke of the hammers all the way to the end.

[00:09:49] I stood there in silence as I heard the tone that tells you goodbye. I must have stood there for another ten minutes before I took the phone with me and walked upstairs again.

[00:10:04] I sat on the couch and texted my girlfriend goodnight and relaxed in front of the television until I fell asleep. In the morning dad called promptly at nine asking how everything was going and that everything

[00:10:18] went well for him the previous night thanking me for taking care of his store. It must have been the first time I heard him say such a sincere thank you to me. It was the first time I told him that he was welcome the way that I did.

[00:10:33] We just weren't the touchy-feely type of people in my family. I was glad that he was okay and I wanted him to come back. At ten I walked downstairs and opened up the shop.

[00:10:46] I hadn't even managed to sit back down when I saw the old woman walking up to the front door. I smiled at her and met her at the entrance. She shook the phone I had loaned her as I asked how she was doing.

[00:11:02] Well this phone didn't ring last night she said smiling. I shared her same smile when I said that I was glad to hear that. I then explained that I had also heard the phone ring at two in the morning and that

[00:11:16] a way to fix that would be to change her phone number. Her eyes lit up but then said that her friends would not know that new phone number. She then stopped suddenly and asked who the caller had been. It was likely a machine I explained.

[00:11:34] They played a piano song and then hung up. Did they say anything? What song was it? She was surprised at my lack of knowledge about classical music and despite the song being familiar to me I tried humming it.

[00:11:50] Before she started humming it along with me her voice was cracking when she said knocked her an E flat that's Robert's song. Then a wide smile spread along her face. Do I owe you anything? She asked.

[00:12:17] I said no after a few seconds but then I tried to find out if she wanted me to change her phone number or if she wanted to trade it for another loaner phone. She smiled and said that she was okay with it now.

[00:12:32] She then said thank you and then walked out the door. The next story is called Five Steps Away. It's coming up right after this. A car passed at just the wrong time desperately hoping that the audio would

[00:13:17] have at least caught the moment that the little girl dropped her ice cream cone and screamed in sadness made my fingers tremble against the recorder almost missing the stop button it pushed on the track back one and then pressed the tiny speaker against my

[00:13:33] ear I should have brought my headphones but even through the loud noises on the street I knew that luck was not on my side that day I had missed it and here's the thing I doubt anyone else has ever

[00:13:47] bumped into one of us people out there recording everyday objects walking around the streets with microphones but trust me it's a job sure walking through airport security will always flag me with some questions about why I'm carrying so many microphones

[00:14:05] so many interfaces with me and then asking if I'm a producer or musician but really I just catch sounds and add them to my own collections or sell them in my libraries when I was first starting out I would go around editing sounds and

[00:14:22] uploading them for $1.79 on some of the forums mostly for low budget films or universities that would buy them they would be sounds of footsteps through metal stairs or sounds of airplanes passing by I used to live by lax which was

[00:14:39] both a blessing and a curse for all of the airplane sounds which was good then it was bad for all the sounds that would get in the way of other sound recordings but things were changing with every season things started becoming a little more extreme

[00:14:56] sounds of homeless people fighting in the streets or the sounds of a leg breaking sure you can make these with celery and smashing fruits in order to get the perfect sounds out there was also another level of production getting the real thing realistic sounds paid the most money

[00:15:19] and even though hardly any field recordist out there would ever admit to this some of us were guilty of trading evil things for money among the groups and conferences there would be a few that talked about it being our

[00:15:34] rite of passage the things that we would do for sound just like photographers do for the perfect photograph but then we would reach a tipping point that would turn us back into the friendly men and women walking around with huge headphones and microphones in their hands

[00:15:51] for me what happened last year around christmas requests for sounds and the horror topics are big around the start of the year are you surprised to hear about that i was too before i got into this anyway there was a specific director that i legally can't name

[00:16:15] who would reach out for a few of us here in the los angeles area about getting some sound made sometimes it would be about on location recordings and other times it would be requests for sounds human sounds laughter cries grunts and screams but this recording

[00:16:41] will never leave me it was almost five in the morning and the metro station had just opened there were a few people on the train platform and i was adjusting the cables of one of my microphones when i heard it

[00:16:56] people gasped at the same time there was a woman at the end of the platform that was screaming hysterically unable to make any other sounds i was standing five steps away from the edge of the platform staring at the woman and pointing my microphone at her echoing screams

[00:17:14] i had press record by now and was staring at the monitoring graph on my device sound was perfect two guys rushed up toward the platform from behind me as i watched a hand trying to reach over the yellow border on the edge just before the rails

[00:17:33] one of the guys reached for his left hand the other grabbed him from his right elbow the train was now approaching it's coming fast with the loud screech of the brake system as they try to stop before striking the man i could see the top of his head

[00:17:50] immediately before i saw both of his eyes the plea for me to help was only five steps away from grabbing on his shirt and yanking him out onto the safe concrete platform but it was then when the screeching

[00:18:06] takes over the recording two guys trying to pull him up lost grip against the heavy train as the body crunched away from them under the train tracks the screams didn't last for very long the woman at the end of the platform sounded like a blurred echo

[00:18:27] the sounds of the brakes and the wheels against the metal tracks covered up most of what i needed after the disappointment left me it got covered up by what i had just done a consequence of those who lose themselves in sound

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[00:19:24] thank you very much for listening see you soon