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Hello [redacted],
Thanks so much for reaching out and sending us pictures!
We’ve sifted through the limited information available to us and we believe we’ve found a match.
“Around 1972, production began on a prototype toy for the awarding winning children’s television show Welcome Home.
The Talky Phone featured recorded voice lines from each character in the show packed into a groovy design.
However, after the show’s cancellation, distribution was halted and officially no copies were ever delivered to store shelves.”
That is the response from our source.
Despite its state, that is definitely a Talky Phone.
This is the first piece of physical merchandise confirmed to have existed!
This must be exciting for you, especially if you remember it, but we have to ask you for your own safety to not tell anybody about this. In regards to finding others who might remember, our project is already doing that safely and we’ll be happy to share our findings with you after we’ve verified your identity.
Did you hear it? When you opened the package?
We are enclosing a PO Box for you to mail it to, if you want.
If you weren’t so far away, perhaps we could arrange an in person meeting, but if you’d like to discuss this at greater length before mailing it off we are including a phone number as well.
Thank you again for reaching out. Seriously.
Sincerely,
The Welcome Home Restoration Team
You read over the email again on your laptop, sitting at your desk with a warm cup of coffee between your hands.
Taking a drink of the mocha, you contemplated.
There was absolutely no way that anyone could be playing a prank on you, which made the situation all the more unsettling and yet…exciting!
You hadn’t said a word to anybody about Welcome Home since you were a little kid well over twenty years ago and even back then, you’d only gushed about it to your parents.
They’d explained to you that the tape containing the recording of that single episode must have been very old because even during their own childhood they’d never seen this series.
The fact that you’d stumbled upon it at all must have been a one in a million chance.
The VHS it was recorded on had been part of a box of old movies purchased as a lot from a yard sale.
You wished so badly that you still had it!
Who knew where it had ended up after you’d played it to death, but if you still had it, maybe with the technology today it could have been restored.
You got up from your chair and sighed, downing the rest of your coffee, and left the living room office to go look at it again.
A beaten up box set on the foot of your bed.
You opened it up, observing the Talky Phone in all of its abused vintage glory.
The rotary was dinged up and the red plastic of the body was faded and covered in scratches.
The wire in the coiled cord was visible, the coating frayed and flaky.
How did they know?
Whoever had placed this box in front of your door next to the normal packages could not have known that you’d ever known of Welcome Home!
In fact, you’d forgotten that you’d known until today and it wasn’t until laying eyes on the images on the Restoration Project’s site that the memories came trickling back…it felt like a fever dream.
You looked at the underside of the phone, where the battery door was sealed shut with mold and corrosion.
Had it been dug out of a dump, to be in such a sorry state?
What could be the explanation for this? Regardless, the joy and anticipation swelling in your chest was already reminiscent of the sheer enthusiasm you’d been capable of as a kid.
Waiting for a new game release, for a field trip, for Christmas morning…
You sighed.
The restoration team seemed sincere.
Maybe you could trust them.
You scratched your nail against the corrosion.
This phone certainly wasn’t going to go for any money as a collector’s item.
Then again, if this was the only surviving item of a lost toy line it might be worth something regardless…or were you just looking for an excuse to keep it to yourself?
The specifics of the episode had faded into your subconscious decades ago, but this broken little trinket did instill a sense of familiar warmth in your heart.
You could remember that Welcome Home had made you so, so happy for a little while.
It was all you could talk about.
You’d wanted more of it. Anything.
Your parents had chalked it up to a TV show that must not have done well and only lasted for one season, but to find out now that there were dozens of other episodes out there!
If your child self were in front of you right now, you thought, what would be best for her?
Keeping this rackety toy all to yourself to fulfill her selfishness?
Or passing it on to the Restoration Project, establishing a cordial relationship with them, and possibly uncovering more information as a team? If you’d loved Welcome Home so much, wouldn't you want to share it with the world?
Although it would hurt to send this little treasure away, you had to do what was right.
“Okay.” You nodded, confident that this was the just thing to do.
Tomorrow, you’d reply to the email.
For now, you set the phone on your nightstand by the lamp, intent on buying some bubble wrap and packing it up with more care than it had arrived. You’d try to clean it up a little, too. Educate yourself on vintage toy restorations so that you wouldn’t do any more damage.
After turning off all of the lights in your apartment, you retired to bed, playing a game on your cell phone and reading through your usual message boards until you were overtaken by sleep.
* * * * *
Riiiiing!
Riiiiing!
You jolted awake with an innate awareness that something was wrong.
A phone–a landline–was ringing directly next to you. Loudly.
This had to be a dream?
Riiiing!
Riiiing!
No. This wasn’t a dream.
You reached to your nightstand and flipped on your lamp.
Riiiing!
The Talky Phone vibrated ever so slightly.
Riiiing!
You were tripping, right?
Before you could ponder this impossibility, you picked up the handset and held it to your ear.
There was static on the other end, crackling like gravel.
How?! This was just a toy!
A flat male voice spoke through the noise, inhumanly calm. “Hello…? Hello…?”
That voice, riddled with noise as it was, could only be…
“H-Hello?” you said dumbly.
“It’s been a while, Neighbor. Do you remember me?”
You wiped sweat from your forehead. “Who is this? How are you talking to me through a toy? Are you–are you–” You swallowed. “With the government?!”
“HA…ha…ha…funny joke. It’s me, Wally. When you were much, much smaller, we used to play together. Don’t you remember?”
You couldn’t, but you were trying to.
“Neighbor, I…haven’t stopped thinking about you. In all this time. In fact, you’re the last person I’ve seen. Twenty years ago, was it?”
As crazy as it was, you liked hearing this.
It was a relief to hear that someone missed you for a change.
The past few years of your life, you were the one doing all the missing.
That was what he meant, right?
“I miss you.”
“You do? Wait–how is this possible? The characters in Welcome Home…they were just…”
“Puppets? Not anymore….ha…Hey, why don’t you come see for yourself?”
You switched the phone to your other ear and wiped your palm on the sheets. “How?”
“It’s easy. Think about me. And go to sleep.”
You scratched the back of your head a little too hard, but the discomfort reminded you that this was really happening. “But…I don’t remember our time together. I’m sorry. I wish I did.”
“You do,” he replied without the least bit of concern. “You don’t realize it on the surface, but…it’s inside of you.”
Inside of you.
Those words seared like a branding iron.
Wally continued. “If it wasn’t…we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.”
He’s right.
You glanced around your room–your sad, spacious room in this single apartment where you lived alone–at the stuffed animals on the shelves and your TV with a Switch hooked up to it that you hadn’t played in months.
When was the last time you’d talked another human being outside of your work?
The isolation. It was eating at you.
You twirled a lock of your hair around your finger, the static still hissing into your ear, and considered that maybe you had finally lost your mind.
“Neighbor. I know how it feels to be so alone. But you don’t have to be. That’s why I made sure you got this funny little phone.”
You stood up. “That was you? H-How…this box didn’t have a shipping label. You came to my apartment?!”
“Not. Exactly. It took a while.”
That didn’t answer the question!
“Listen, I know you have questions…but Neighbor, I promise I will explain everything when you get here. I have to go now. So be a good girl and go to sleep. I’ll see you very, very soon.”
You swallowed. “Wally-”
“Goodbye.”
Click!
The line was disconnected and the crackling ceased all at once. Just like a real phone.
You blinked, trying to bring yourself back down to reality, but this was reality, and there would be no escaping what had just happened.
Looking down, you realized that the phone cord had finally broken.
It would take hours to go back to sleep, keeping your lamp on and staring up at the dull popcorn ceiling until the sun bled through the blinds. You decided to text your boss that you were sick and would miss work today.
Despite your curiosity, you were scared.
Even if this had been truly nothing, surely you’d spooked your subconscious enough that a nightmare was inevitable. You couldn’t stop thinking about it, replaying that unsettling conversation over and over again.
Wally. The Neighborhood. Your life now.
But eventually, the mindlessness of an encroaching slumber settled your thoughts and pulled your consciousness away.