THE BLACK PHONE begins with a terrifying question. What if the person who kidnaps you has already taken away your freedom, your identity and almost every chance of escaping, but the only thing that can help you survive is a telephone that should not work? Finney Blake is a quiet teenager growing up in a neighborhood where children have begun disappearing. He lives with his younger sister Gwen and their abusive father, trying to navigate a childhood shaped by fear, bullying and the constant threat of violence at home. Finney is intelligent but withdrawn, often finding himself unable to stand up to the people who torment him. Gwen, on the other hand, is outspoken and fiercely protective of her brother. She has strange dreams that sometimes reveal information about the missing children, although she does not fully understand where these visions come from. Then Finney becomes the latest victim of a masked kidnapper known as the Grabber. The man lures him into a van and takes him to a soundproof basement, where Finney discovers a room containing almost nothing except a mattress, a toilet and an old black telephone mounted on the wall. The telephone is disconnected. There is no reason for it to work. Yet shortly after Finney is locked inside, it begins to ring. When he answers, he hears the voices of the Grabber’s previous victims. The boys are dead, but somehow they can still communicate with him. Each one has a different piece of information about the basement, the kidnapper or the mistakes that prevented them from escaping. Finney realizes that the telephone may be his only chance of survival. But every attempt to escape reveals how carefully the Grabber has designed the place to keep him trapped.