Chapter Text
The first time Spencer Reid received a strange phone call he thought nothing of it. The logical portion of his mind dismissed the fear that curled around his stomach as childish anxiety and rampant imagination.
Though belief is powerful, it does little to change the actual events that occur.
Spencer was nine years old, dead asleep under the covers of his dark blue comforter. Tall bookshelves lined the walls of his bedroom, although they were sparsely adorned and gathered more cobwebs than novels. Moonlight slipped through the curtains in thin, pale stripes.
Spencer sat up with a gasp.
He had been awoken by some sort of metallic ring, however it was hard to determine whether it was real or if it was just another haunting fragment of the nightmare he had just broken out of. Spencer’s question was quickly answered when the noise came again, and this time he recognized that it originated from down the stairs. Quick movements were marked only by hot breath that became fog as it left his mouth and entered the surrounding air. He stepped over the loose floorboards and navigated the stairs in almost complete darkness.
Standing on the lowest landing, Spencer’s initial glance-over provided no clarifying information.
A haunting scream of wind rang from the outside in. A few stray snowflakes slipped through the cracked window and gathered at his feet. The blanket that covered the hallway mirror billowed outwards; through Spencer’s paranoid eyes the shadows looked like reaching hands.
Everything was wrong.
Nothing made sense—not the house, not the cold, not even the erratic fear twisting beneath his ribs. Its insanity bothered him almost more than the fear itself. The sheer irrationality of his emotional state was perplexing compared to the usual composition.
So he decided to check out the noise instead of just ignoring it, just to reassure his racing mind. He felt so childish yielding to fear, and specifically that of the dark. One theory suggests the fear may be an evolutionary adaptation to the risk of predator attacks at night. Most children grow out of this fear by age 12.
Resolve momentarily strengthened by embarrassment, Spencer finally entered the kitchen.
His father’s antique rotary phone had collected enough dust to appear gray. The sudden shrill ring startled Spencer back to the present and a small voice in the back of his head suggested this was an unusual occurrence, although he couldn’t quite articulate why. The thought of waking his mother up to answer the call bled more apprehension into him than just picking it up himself.
Perhaps a bill collection agency was attempting to contact them? Spencer may be young but he was certainly not stupid, his mother barely left her room these days–he simply cannot imagine that she was effectively managing her money. This was on top of the fact that her episodes did not tend to last this long, and Spencer was beginning to fear that she was losing more of herself every time.
Staring at the phone, Spencer began to ponder the circumstances. Maybe, the government really was coming for them. He liked to think of himself as realistic and grounded in reality; however, in the dark of night, sometimes reality took a new form and the doubt started to linger. Unable to help it, the seeds of his mother’s delusions had at the very least taken root, if not begun to grow. Surrounded by the reasonable, calming nature of the sure-minded adults that taught at his high school, Spencer had little to no trouble scoffing at some of his mother’s more conspiratorial paranoias.
Winter break was a gaping vulnerability in his mental defense and it left him exposed.
The days blended together in a monotonous drum of quarantine and anxious ramblings. When it was only Spencer and his mother, everything was a bit more unnerving. Sometimes it was harder to truly believe that there was nothing out to get him. He knew it was just his mind playing tricks on him but on those cold winter nights the shadows seemed deeper and the house settling just happened to sound frighteningly similar to gentle footsteps.
And how could he be sure—really sure—that he wasn’t sick like his mother?
Spencer shuffled toward the phone and flinched back at the static shock he received from touching the handset. Trying once more, he held the phone with faintly shaking fingers.
“...Hello?” was the only thing that fell from Spencer’s dry and cracking lips as staticky-rumbling breaths refused to introduce itself, “Who’s there?”
A gruff but gentle voice lets out a hum of acknowledgement, “Yes, how can I help you?”
“Um sir, you called me?”
Silence sat uneasily.
“I'm not so sure about that. You see, I’m busy, Stephen. I’ve got a letter to write.”
“I'm sorry, you have the wrong number. I’m Spencer, not Stephen.”
The sharp sting of remembrance hit him after already revealing his name and he swears to not divulge anything else. Stranger danger. Often misleading because most abduction cases involve someone the child knows, not a stranger. Which just makes the strange familiarity he felt from this man send goosebumps down his arms to his fingertips.
“Spencer? …R— um, Re—Reid! Spencer Reid?”
There was nothing in the world that he wanted to do more than hang up, but his arms couldn’t seem to work. Lead-lined limbs constricted the longer he stayed in the cold. If Spencer didn’t know any better he would’ve thought that icicles had formed above his head, though only his sixth sense whispered this, there was simply no truth to back it up. At least, that’s what he hoped, and perhaps if he never looked up he would not have to confront this.
Spencer muttered into the phone, “I… um,“ He shook off the strange feeling and ignored the question, ”Can I help you with something? ..I should really be heading back to bed soon.”
“I’ve…I’ve lost something.”
Left only to indulge him rather than hang up Spencer responded, “...What have you lost, sir?” However, more interference than understandable words answered him, “The world confuses me, the - - - - - -, indifference, and - - -.”
Static burst through the speaker and he had to lean back as his ears rang sharply, “Mr?”
“I’ve lost the belief in happy endings.”
Spencer tried to wipe the sleep from his eyes but it all continued to not make any sense, “Um, I’m afraid I don’t know how to help you. Perhaps you should try going back to sleep.”
Even as he said it, unease crawled through him. Something inside him wished the man wouldn’t go.
“I think I have to go somewhere to find it.”
An odd sensation of curiosity kept his interest in the conversation. Some small voice in the back of his mind whispered that this was all important, “Well, where are you going?”
“Nowhere in particular.”
“Then how will you know when you get there?”
The line clicked dead.
Spencer was left reeling with a sick sense of dread and unexplainable misery. What?
How does one feel deja vu over a conversation they will never be privy to? All of the previously unthought of questions began to bubble towards the surface. Who was that? Why did he sound so familiar? What did he mean? Why did he hang up?
All Spencer could do was gaze at the blurry reflection from the kitchen window, and for just a heartbeat he thought it was a much older version of himself staring back.
The creeping sense of dread that seemed to consume his every waking moment came to a crescendo as a spidery web of chills tangled up his spine.
There was something behind him, and the flickering light from the kitchen seemed to flash in warning louder than his pounding heart.
Three short flashes, three long ones, followed by a continuation of the first arrangement. The old dingy bulb paused, and Spencer held his breath in tandem, almost hoping that it would just burn out. Instead, the pattern continued, and continued.
His mind recognized it before he consciously did.
Three short, three long, three short.
Officially adopted in 1906 at the International Radiotelegraph Convention and first documented use in 1908.
... --- …
SOS.
A sudden, heavy stomp echoed behind him—
—and the light fixture shattered synchronously.
Spencer swung around, bracing to make eye contact with an intruder, unsure of what he would even do if someone was really in his house.
His shoulders fell in relief when all that met his eyes was the sight of greying wallpaper and the next breath he took was a little bit clearer. Just a coincidence, no, a pattern that his sleep deprived mind had conjured to torture him further. There was no one else here, the lightbulb was old, and the strange phone call had to have been a dream.
The isolation of this house must be driving him crazy.
As he knelt among the shards, a flicker at the edge of his vision made him gasp. For a split second, he saw a man in a dark suit, standing silently behind the kitchen doorway—older, familiar, yet impossible. When he blinked, nothing remained but the shadowed wallpaper. If he had been less concerned with cleaning the glass before his mother awoke to step on it, he would have noticed that the receiver was now lying on the floor.
There was no longer a dial tone to buzz relentlessly; and due to the rusted, cut wire that was twisted around the leg of the side table it sat on—was never supposed to in the first place.
The next morning Diana Reid would throw the old rotary into the backyard in a fit of rage because the ringing would simply not leave her alone even though it had been dead for years.
A cold chill rolled down Spencer’s spine and all he could bring himself to do was curl his numb fingertips into his arm and pinch. Nothing changed.
Nothing ever did.
The second, third, and every call after continued to challenge his fragile understanding of sanity.
However, just as most children do—he forgot.
An eidetic memory has nothing on the intense internal pressure to push down everything strange. Although he does not answer phone calls anymore, to Spencer Reid it is simply just another irregularity that separates him from his peers.
The uncanny familiarity that struck him, a short eleven years later, the first time he truly met Gideon was certainly unrelated. Nothing about Spencer’s new life could be traced back to the decaying, drafty house his mother no longer lived in.
The empty house with no one left to answer the shrill ring that cries out from beneath the dead rose bush in the back garden.
When Spencer Reid shook Jason Gideon’s hand all he heard was a dial tone.