“Tintinnabulation”
by Terry Echoes
There it was again: The sound cutting through the trees, piercing past the wind and calling to mind the silence of every creature in the forest. Craig Secker could hear the tinny tones of a mobile phone from roughly a decade past every time he hit “Redial”, screeching out its irksome, repetitive arpeggio. He kept pressing it, sooner and sooner each time, all while lamenting that he didn’t have time for this merry jaunt into the woods today. 
The next blaring sound in his ear came from his own phone screaming out a cheap rendition of “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic”. He didn’t surprise easily, but there his phone was, tumbling from his fingers and landing somewhere in the dark, muddy leaves strewn along the forest floor. He cursed under his breath as he crouched low and patted his hands blindly in the dead and dirty foliage. His hand brushed over his phone once, rolling it aside in the process and thereby losing position of it all over again. This was accompanied by a whole new slew of expletives until he groped his phone at last and jammed it to his ear. “Hello!?”
He was met with the rasp of a heavy smoker. He could almost smell the burning tobacco issuing out over his phone. “Yeah, hi,” said the oily, relaxed voice on the other end. “Scrooge McDuck. This is Mr. Big.” 
Craig chewed on his upper lip. “I’m Irish, sir. Not Scottish.” 
“Relax, Babyface. I don’t watch children’s cartoons. And anyway, I pay you enough to warrant bustin’ yer chops.” 
Craig exhaled. “Sorry, sir, I—”
“Mr. Big” interrupted him. “Your, uh, ‘supervisor’ hasn’t received word from you yet. I’d hate to think you was chickening or fowling up the job on us, or some other such barnyard metaphor.” 
“No, sir. Not at all. In fact, the job’s finished.” 
“Then what’s the problem? The tower’s still standin’.” 
“Only just. As it stands now, a strong breeze could blow it over, and there’s a seasonal storm incoming.” 
“Oh, goodie!” said the so-called Mr. Big. “That should be fun to watch. There’s nothin’ good on TV.” 
Craig smiled to himself. “Just the weather, sir.” He knew a joke would get him back on the head honcho’s good side. He could hear laughter like a dying cough on the other end of the line, followed by the merciful click of a hang-up. 
Craig’s mood soured further. He’d never been one for vanilla work. None of that nine-to-five bollocks, saying yes sir, no ma’am, thinking of the unentitled as ladies and gentlemen deserving of his precious politesse. He’d rubbed their noses in the prospect of work by finding his own way, finding his own people he’d prefer to answer to, and ever since his young career in Belfast, Craig had found the concessions he was willing to make with his free will. Not that he believed in free will. There wasn’t room for pestering, weighty beliefs in his chosen profession. None of that baggage, except for a damn phone and the eerie, phantasmal tintinnabulation singing out amongst the trees ahead, luring him forward like a chorus of sirens. 
He knew he’d fucked up. He just didn’t know how, or when, it had occurred. Did a kid and his dogs really never sleep? It must have been when he was climbing that tower’s ruts and forcibly unwound its nuts and bearings. No, he was smug on certainty he’d done the job right, that he was just so good he hadn’t been squashed under the tower right then and there. The shearing of metal on metal wasn’t his goal; it was the hubris of his targets and the searing light he’d be shining on it that sated his lusts. 
So who the hell had seen him? Who did all these missed calls belong to? 
Craig gave a listen, turning his head and concentrating on the feeling of the sound entering his ear. He stopped breathing, stopped trying to smell the pine trees that surrounded him like ugly sentinels. He heard the sound, yet, but by shutting out his other senses, a pinprick of doubt grew somewhere where his heart ought to be, if he had more than just a simple muscular organ pumping blood throughout his veins. When he turned his face in the direction of where the ringing phone lie, he realized that the ringing hadn’t stopped, even when he’d taken that call with the big man. Even now, he’d forgotten to restart pressing “Redial”. For a moment, he forgot it wasn’t his phone that was ringing, and he hoped to hell it wasn’t the boss calling for a second time in a row. That wouldn’t bode well by any account. 
No, someone else was now calling this lost phone in the woods that had been calling him all this time. He found this phone at last, pulling his hand from the leaves and mud with distaste. Craig wasn’t known for his itchy trigger finger, but that was exactly how he pressed his thumb to this strange phone to receive the incoming call. Incoming like a live missile, or a family of ravenous bears not content with a mere picnic basket. 
This time, the voice on the other end wasn’t too unlike his own, with an Irish brogue about it. “Craig! Ye scrawny prick. How ya doin’?” Despite the level of familiarity suggested by the words, Craig didn’t have a damn clue who called him on the line. He whirled around on the spot, wondering how this was all working. Was somebody watching him answer the phone? He was so deep in the woods that he couldn’t find a single trace of human life aside from himself and these two phones. 
“Don’t bother rubber-neckin’, Craig-y, old boy. I’m in a rather charming little pub with a glass of aged whiskey on the rocks.” He clinked the ice cubes around in his empty glass. 
“Who are you?” Craig demanded to know. 
“Come, now, Craig-y. You can think up a cleverer response for me than that, can’t you? All your little tricks and subterfuge you’ve pulled over so many years, you must be cunning enough to be five steps ahead of me. Oh, but I suppose you don’t remember the last time you were in Belfast?” 
“How ‘bout you shut up and I hang up right now?” Craig glanced at the screen of the phone, but the caller ID had been somehow turned off. 
“Is that the sort of temper that unscrewed the load-bearing tungsten of that tower last night? Patience, Craig-y boy. We’re gonna meet again very soon, you and I.” 
And with that, the phone hung up. Craig knew he was being screwed with, but truth be told, a lifetime of orders didn’t prepare him for this. He wasn’t used to being threatened by mystery voices over the phone. Crime bosses only cared for two things: Results, and people taking care of their own problems that arise. 
 He chucked the stranger’s burner phone as hard as he could, and it shattered against a tree. So this idiot knew him, did he? Well, he was going to rue the day he tried to screw with a member of the most dangerous trans-Atlantic criminal organization in history. Not wanting to waste time muddling over the problem in the muddy woods, he set forth. 
The instant he took a step, he trod off the mine, and exploded into several bloody pieces across the forest.