Stay on the Line Audiobook By Clay McLeod Chapman cover art

Stay on the Line

A Novelette

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Stay on the Line

By: Clay McLeod Chapman
Narrated by: Patricia Santomasso, Sean Patrick Hopkins
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After a small coastal town is devastated by a hurricane, the survivors gravitate toward a long out-of-service payphone in hopes of talking out their grief and saying goodbye to loved ones, only for it to begin ringing on its own. As more townspeople answer the call, friends and family believed to have been lost to the storm begin searching for a way back home.

©2024 Shortwave Media (P)2025 Shortwave Media Horror Suspense Thriller & Suspense

Critic reviews

"This book is a literary punch to the heart." —New York Times
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Listener received this title free

Stay On The Line
By Clay McLeod Chapman
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
When a hurricane blows through the town of Brandywine and the lives of many are lost, their family members are all grief stricken. Until one day, they see a woman who seems to be talking to someone in the abandoned phone booth. Jenny lost her husband and is left alone to raise their daughter Shelby. When Jenny decides to venture into the phone booth, she’s amazed to find her husband’s voice on the line. What starts as a sprinkle of joy in her life soon turns to one of fear and uncertainty.
Patricia narrates this book with ease. She brought this book to life with her steady tone and flow. Sean’s role on the other side of phone line is portrayed with such emotion. The sound effects used really transport you into the book as if you are in that phone booth with Jenny.

Must read!

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“Reach out and touch someone.”

This was the slogan gracing television and radio waves throughout the 1980s courtesy of phone giant AT&T’s marketing campaigns. Long before emails, texting, and social media DMs took over as means of long-distance communication, there was the stationary, rooted-in-one-place landline telephone.

In Clay McLeod Chapman’s subtextual novelette STAY ON THE LINE (2024), this landline comes in the form of a telephone booth, an instrument so prevalent at one time, it was actually adopted as Clark Kent’s “changing room” when he would need to transform into everyone’s favorite alien hero Superman. Here, the payphone relic is the center of transformation once again, but now in a present-day seaside town where it stands the test of time and the powerful winds of a devastating hurricane. Except this landline not only reaches out to loved ones -- it reaches out to the dead.

The Story

Brandywine, population 233, situated somewhere along the Chesapeake Bay where fishing is the main industry of the day, is home to married couple Jenny (bartender at the fisherman bar) and Collum (the fisherman) and their young daughter Shelby. As Hurricane Audrey (who Jenny calls “the other woman”) is about to make landfall into their small town, Collum decides to check on his boat to make sure it’s anchored and prepared for the impact much to Jenny’s protest. “Be right back,” he tells her. Unfortunately, Collum never makes it back home, leaving Jenny without a husband and Shelby without a father. Through all of this, I couldn’t help but think of Looking Glass’s one hit wonder from the 1970s “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)” where the fisherman tells the titular bartender who is in love with him, “my life my love and my lady is the sea” as he leaves her behind the bar. I’m sure the name of the town is just a coincidence…?

As the town begins mourning those they lost in the storm, the monolithic artifact from the past standing outside Jenny’s bar begins to work again, connecting Brandywine’s citizens with the voices of their recently deceased/missing loved ones.

Jenny hears Collum’s voice again, giving her a sense of hope that he’s still alive somewhere out there (“I know that look: hope”). It’s only when the residents who have communicated with their loved ones end up dead themselves, washed ashore and half-eaten by the oceanic wildlife, does Jenny begin to question the phone booth’s purpose and the voices on the other end of its wire.

The Subtext

If you haven’t figured it out by now, this emotional punch of a story is full of subtext and Chapman does an excellent job presenting it within this small space.

Examples:

The Past – It should not be lost on the reader that an artifact from the past is the device used to connect to the past, both lost to the “before.” The phone booth has a landline, something that doesn’t move, something frozen in place and time. It holds us in place as we grieve for another life once lived that we can no longer have. The booth becomes a sarcophagus made of glass and metal. But we must believe…we must have faith…

Religion – You must have faith in order to believe. Even when the evidence tells you different, even when your common sense says otherwise, you must believe the impossible to be possible. There are even symbolic moments that try to convince you, like when the booth appears under the streetlight in the dark of night, as if sent from the Heavens above. It must be a sign, right?

Cults –Related to religion before it, when we are grieving, in a state of shock, dealing with trauma, we become the most vulnerable versions of ourselves, and predators at the door are ready to pounce. The booth becomes a remodeled and refurbished shrine, even in better shape than it had been during its heyday.

Addiction – The residents become addicted to the voices on the other end, they even become hostile to one another, obsessive, possessive, often exhibiting tics and irritation. The citizens, including Jenny, even begin hearing the voices of their loved ones in their heads without the telephone up to their ears. They need it. They can’t live without it.

Mythology – From the sea, they sing their beautiful songs of hope that entice the fisherman to forget everything they know and join them in the deep waters of oblivion. I am of course talking about the Sirens reaching out and touching someone – forever.

Karma – It’s stated explicitly in the story about how the phone calls are like fishing lines, hoping people stay on the line, hooked by the voices, and eventually get reeled in. The subtext though? This is a town that has benefited from its fishing industry and now the roles have reversed.

The Performances

Human emotions are complex. Losing a loved one can bring sorrow so deep it can drown the bereaved in a stalled life full of false hopes with a vulnerability to be preyed upon by nefarious players. But it’s what we do with the sorrow that can provide us with a lifesaver or, on the other hand, a pair of cement shoes.

And this complexity is superbly brought to life through the performance of narrator Patricia Santomasso.

“How could you leave us?” The sorrow is palpable through the speakers when Santomasso provides it. The emotion is transferred to listener, and we feel humanity pouring through the anger, resentment, vulnerability, false hope, and eventually acceptance. The heart wrenching story is made that much stronger by her performance. Only a human who’s lived, lost, and loved can deliver it.

Which is why Santomasso’s performance gives me REAL hope when it comes to human narrators preventing the AI clones from taking over, particularly for voice acting in fiction whether it be audiobooks, audiodramas, animation, or even video games. The nuances of human emotion cannot be taught, nor can they be authenticated through the most proficient of artificial means.

Santomasso provides different voices throughout the story, even Collum’s voice, until the also-talented Sean Patrick Hopkins provides the voice for the Collum on the other end of the phone booth line. Flat at first before gradually becoming entrusting and then becoming something entirely different, the change of voice is an ingenious move as you will understand once you hear the full story. Kudos to Hopkins for providing that chill you’ll feel going up and down your spine at one point in the conversation.

The Conclusion

Do we hang on to the past, wallow in our grief, hoping and wishing for a return of how things used to be? Do we allow the grief to swallow us up and pull us in the undertow of eternity? Do we adopt a new religion or join a cult with the hopes that we will see our lost loved ones again sooner rather than later, not allowing anything to stand in our way of doing so? Or do we move forward, determined to live in our present and to continue living in our future, if not for us, then for somebody else we dearly love?

Much like the AT&T slogan of old said “reach out and touch someone,” this story and the performances did exactly that for me. I hope it’ll touch you too.

Reach Out and Touch Someone

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Listener received this title free

This story grabbed me from the first line and never let up. It was well plotted and well paced but the thing that really made it stand out to me was the emotional depth and humanity in it. The narrators, especially Tricia Santomasso, did a wonderful job of bringing those aspects to life. There were a couple points I actually found myself tearing up. Sean Patrick Hopkins who read for the husband is Tricia’s spouse and knowing the two are romantic partners added an extra layer of realism and depth to a story that is already resonant with those qualities. All these elements came together to make for an immersive and thoroughly enjoyable narrative experience that I highly recommend!

Fantastic story with very talented narrators!

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Ooh, this was such a compelling listen. Patricia Santomasso had me “on the line” from the first sentence. The chilling foreboding in this novelette plays out so beautifully from the opening moments of her performance. The raw intensity in her voice finds a delicious counterpoint in Sean Patrick Hopkins’ smoothly layered swell towards the sinister. No spoilers but the ending left me quite… unsettled. Definitely seeking out more titles from this author and narrators!

Deft manipulation of the horror of grief

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Great story, combined with flawless narration! Quick listen, but it sticks with you. Very atmospheric, very intense.

Creepy story, exemplary performances

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Since Chapman's Kill Your Darling, I have become a nearly rabid fan of his work. I jumped at the chance to listen to this short audiobook and you should do the same!

Grief horror is a thing and I am here for it. Who wouldn't want to hear again the voices of those they have loved and lost? You can see the cover of the book and now you have an idea where it's going and that's all you're getting plot-wise.

The audiobook edition of this is the way to go, honestly. Patricia Santomasso and Sean Patrick Hopkins offer up exceptional performances and there are a few other cool audio touches to make this extra special.

That's all can tell you about this audio novelette other than that you need to hop on this, like NOW. It's a short, sharp, shock of a tale that only Clay McLeod Chapman can provide!

My highest recommendation!

*ARC from narrator

Holy H*LL, That Was Awesome!

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Listener received this title free

Whichever ad wizards came up with the long-enduring ad slogan of “Reach out and touch someone” for AT&T back in the 1970s probably didn’t expect their campaign encouraging Americans to rack up their phone bills with long distance call charges to provide a touchstone for telephonic grief horror so many decades later. Of course, one doesn’t have to look hard to find a certain insidiousness in those words, to twist an otherwise cozy, cutesy corporate phrase into a threatening promise.

When Hurricane Aubrey hits the Chesapeake, bartender Jenny loses her fisherman love, Callum, to the elements. The loss unmoors her and their daughter, leaving them stranded and emotionally adrift. Their small town of only a few hundred is hit hard, but one of the things left standing is a long-defunct payphone outside Jenny’s dockside watering hole. It hasn’t been operational in decades, the booth now covered in graffiti and used as a make-out spot for local teens. It’s even where Jenny and Callum conceive their daughter, Shelby. Reach out and touch someone, indeed!

In the wake of Aubrey’s violent tantrum, the booth has attracted a new crowd. People who have lost loved ones in the storm now line up in the bar’s parking lot for a chance to step inside that phone booth, waiting for their turn to use the old, dead landline to speak one last time to their dearly departed.

Clay McLeod Chapman doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel with Stay on the Line, turning to the familiar ‘phone-calls from the dead’ trope that has largely replaced the Ouija board in the 21st Century, but he does a great job firmly grounding the story within the emotional core of grieving widow Jenny. There can still be room for worn tropes as long as they are propped up by strong, compelling characters that give us a reason to care, and Chapman succeeds in that. It helps, too, that Stay on the Line is supremely focused and the author keeps it short, knowing, perhaps, that it’s a tired premise but that his characters are young, strong, and emotionally potent. In print, Stay on the Line was only about 80 pages with illustrations, and this audiobook runs a brisk 61 minutes.

Chapman uses much of the first half of this novelette to establish the family and their dynamic. Callum is the fun parent and has turned the ancient phone booth into a fantastical story point in the bedtime stories he tells Shelby. He’s also had to convince Shelby that the phone booth was, in fact, an actual, real-life, functioning telephone that people used to make calls. She doesn’t believe him. I couldn’t help but grin at this, having had a similar conversation with both of my sons over the old-fashioned toy rotary phone they once played with. It didn’t look anything at all like the iPhones my wife and I use, didn’t take pictures or videos, and had this big dial on it. It couldn’t possibly be a phone; daddy was just pulling their leg. I think my wife talked them around eventually, and then they saw similar rotary phones in a movie from the 80s and realized we were actually serious.Thankfully, they haven’t gotten any phone calls from deceased relatives on their toy (yet).

Stay on the Line digs deeper into the supernatural in its second half, when Jenny can no longer resist her curiosity about the phone booth and whether or not it will reconnect her with her lost love. Chapman covers the usual ground one would expect from the premise, but he does offer up some neat sequences of creeping dread, and one flat-out horrific scene in which the phone booth becomes a tomb of aquatic horrors. The audio production helps to amplify the creep factor with some well-done sound effects mixed in by audio editor Eric West. Sean Patrick Hopkins’s voice work as Jenny’s other half takes on spooky, staticky, ethereal overtones that really help sell the otherworldly nature of Jenny and Callum’s conversations.

The bulk of the production, though, belongs to Patricia Santomasso, who positively inhabits the role of Jenny, bringing nuance and heartfelt emotion through the grief of her loss, the elation of being reconnected with Callum, and the wariness and fear over the concerns that follow. On a personal note, I’ve worked with Santomasso and Hopkins both in separate audiobook productions of my own work and was absolutely delighted at how those projects turned out. As such, I was expecting them to bring their talents to the fore here and wasn’t the least bit surprised to find their work to be excellent. I did my best to avoid any bias in my judgements here, but I’ll let you listen to them and decide for yourself. Let me just say, there is a reason they’re both award winning narrators with hundreds upon hundreds of titles under their belt.

Stay on the Line is an emotionally resonant horror and Santomasso brings it all to compelling life. Her narration is as richly heartfelt as Chapman’s earnest prose. If you’ve read the print edition previously, you’ll want to experience the story again as an audiobook. If you haven’t, you may want to reach out and… well, maybe not touch someone, but at least grab yourself a copy.

Reach Out And Touch Someone

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Listener received this title free

I’m glad I listened to this book by the light of day because I don’t think I would have slept well if I had listened at night. The narration is excellent- pauses at all the right moments, pure terror creeping into her voice as the story ramps up. In the spirit of Pet Sematary, makes you wonder what lengths you’d go to to connect with a lost loved one. And is it ever worth it in the end? Have a listen! You won’t be disappointed.

It’ll give you the creeps in broad daylight!

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