Bob Randall - The Calling

[dem bones]

Bob Randall - The Calling (NEL, 1983; Simon & Schuster, 1981)

Photo: David Rudkin

Blurb:
She answered the phone.
Nothing: no voice, no breathing, no dialling or engaged tone.
Nothing, an utter blankness. A dead line, that was all. And yet a nothingness that was charged with a terrible ominous positive quality.
Strangely shaken, she put the receiver down. Later it rang again: a flicker of irrational fear as she moved to answer. And the old dog, disturbed, cringed and whimpered in its sleep.
Again, nothing. An awful evil positive nothing.
Later again, out on the street the pay phone started ringing as she passed. Ringing eerily, insistently ... following her ... following her ...
That was the beginning, just the beginning.

Manhattan, 1981. Meet Susan Reed, an illustrator of modern Gothic stories ("Will women read absolutely anything?), married to a lawyer, mother of cute little Andrea, dotty over her faithful, dopey mutt, Sweet William. Happy marriage, great career, affluent, healthy - Susan is truly blessed .... until that day she picks up the phone.

As with The Fan, a novel of epic persecution. Who has Susan so upset that they would torment her in such sadistic fashion? A series of increasingly cruel and inexplicable events suggest the hand of the supernatural, but can it really be that Satan has taken to randomly selecting the damned from the pages of the telephone directory?

While I didn't find The Calling quite as unsettling as The Fan it's probably the "better" novel of the two - and equally vicious. Very recommended.