One evening, Jake O’Brien schools friend Chris in the art of prank phone calls. Older sister Annie, in charge while their parents are away, warns Jake of the Phone Police, whom she claims to have intercepted local prank caller Billy Baxter. Chris, disenchanted with the sport, heads home.
In the empty hallway, Jake steals away the phone book to his bedroom, and, incredulously, finds the name Billy Baxter. He dials the six digit number, and hears a man’s muffled voice plead for help. Unnerved, he hangs up.
Late that night, the phone by his bed rings. The muffled voice repeats its plea for help. Jake hangs up. Even when unplugged, the phone keeps ringing...
Next day, Chris supposes the voice to have been Annie. As they pass a phonebox, its phone rings. Sure enough, the muffled voice of Billy Baxter repeats its cry for help.
In search of answers, they take the six digit number to the office of the phone company. The receptionist reports the number to be old and discontinued. Jake explains to have successfully dialled it. With a meaningful smile, the receptionist directs them to the records department.
In a gloomy hallway, a suited, grey-haired man solemnly inspects the number. With a knowing smile, he beckons Jake beyond the desk. Two black-uniformed, peaked cap guards approach, one of whom announces them as the Phone Police, and roughly drags Jake off.
While Chris flees, Jake is dragged into a dingy cell. He cries for help, and from beneath the bed, a phone rings. The voice of Billy Baxter tells him not to bother shouting.
Chris runs to Jake’s house, and rings the bell. When Annie answers, he hurries inside, and blurts a report of Jake’s incarceration. With no knowledge of anyone called Jake, Annie orders him out.
He rushes past her to Jake’s room, hoping to prove his story: but finds the room furnished entirely differently, as if Jake never lived here. He appeals to Annie’s recount of Billy Baxter and the Phone Police. She knows the story, only instead of Billy, she heard of their capture of one Jake O’Brien.
At the phone box, Chris consults the phone book, and finds, next to a six digit number, the name Jake O’Brien.
In his cell, Jake receives a call from Chris, who has a plan.
Back at the phone company office, Chris sneakily uses one of the pay phones, to whose hook he fixes an elastic band.
In the record department, the Clerk gruffly calls for Jake to answer the constantly ringing phone. With no answer, he enters the cells. Chris quietly follows him.
The Clerk approaches Jake’s cell, opens the door - and is pushed from behind by Chris, and trips over the kneeling Jake into the cell. The boys close the door behind him, and run.
As Phone Police troop into the cells, the boys take cover, and flee through a side door into a porch, where another door leads to a long corridor - the end of which is enclosed by bars.
The Clerk leads the Phone Police after the boys - to find the hallway empty.
From a manhole cover emerge Jake and Chris. As a flashing black car sirens into view, they hide in a doorway, and run.
On the way to Jake’s house, the black car sirens into view behind them. They flee into the house. Chris hastily explains to Annie the identity of her brother Chris, whose existence she now remembers.
They urge her not to answer the ringing doorbell. She lets in a pizza delivery man, who has the wrong house.
As the relieved boys relax in Jake’s room, the pizza delivery man returns to his car, and pulls off the pizza logo, revealing the symbol of a green telephone...
Jake and Chris, says Tucker, never made another prank call - because they could never be sure whether the Phone Police were real. Still speaking into the phone, he sneaks up behind Frank, and loudly closes the story. As Frank leaps up in startlement, the others laugh. As Gary closes the meeting, the phone rings…
This episode provides examples of:
- Disproportionate Retribution: While prank calls harass, the policy of erasing perpetrators from earthly existence is decidedly vindictive.
- Evil Old Folks: The warden of the phone prison (pictured above) is a thin old man.
- Evil Phone: Once Jake dials the number of Billy Baxter, his bedroom phone, even when disconnected, continues to ring.
- Prank Call: Jake is keen on them; Chris not so much.
- Reality Warper: Incarceration in a cell of the telephone company office seems to erase all traces of Jake’s presence from the face of the earth. Luckily, Chris remembers him, and escape restores his existence.
- Roaring Rampage of Rescue: Chris audaciously tricks the Phone Clerk with a distracting phone call, and sneaks into the cells, whereupon he and Jake trap the guard in Chris’s place.
- Scare 'Em Straight: The boys never make another prank call again.
