Speaker 1: Hullo. I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. I kicked the rotten porch door open,
and a cassette recorder on the splintered table was already running.
The red tally light blinked over hisz and a muffled
scream threaded the static. My voice flattened, and soft fear
pushed me forward. My hand went to the tape like
it could stop what it had already said. Josh was
on the porch behind me, pushing the cigarette butt into
the step with his boot. You owe me forty bucks
if you bail, he said. You promised. The problem was immediate.
The recorder was playing a thing that had not yet happened,
and it used my voice. That was the central problem
in the room, and it did not wait for argument.
I reached for the recorder, and the hiss cut of fraction,
as if the machine had noticed my fingers. I am
twenty seven, lean with a denim jacket. I have once
in summers at this camp. I keep a cracked pristortch
on my left wrist. My clothes smell of damp, sitter
and leg mist. I do not introduce myself I act
I had come to Cabin seven because a dare from
Darth sounded like the kind of thing I could laugh off.
Now that tape made that dare into a demand pause,
I said to Josh. My voice came up tight. It
was the first choice, leave it running and listen, or
stop it and risk losing evidence. Fear tightened my jaw.
Doubt slid in behind that fear. Did I want proof
or did I want to run? Josh slapped the table
and grinned, we keep it, we take it back. Proved
worth more than your conscience. The recorder hummed on the table.
I reached out and pressed stop. The hiss snapped into
hollow silence. The room felt small, as if I had
shut something inside a box. I found the laminated camperoal
cord nailed beside the stove because I looked for rules
when things threatened me. It read in block letters, did
not enter cabin dotty seven, and someone had thumbtacked it there,
so the nail bent. The card smelled of smoke in years.
I thumbed its corner with my thumb, and the paper
scrape black old skin. Mayes, this was locked for a reason,
I said, may cancelor May, Josh snorted, May's running the
graft tables. She doesn't even check the docks at all.
On I picked up the radio on the shelf and
clicked it to the camp frequency. The speaker crackled. For
a moment, I heard nothing but shallow static. Then council
In May's voice came through, exact syllables, too close to
what the tip had said. Don't go to seven, don't.
I froze with my hand on the dial. The voice
and the radio repeated a phrase from the tape and
then dropped into static. Fears sharpened into alarm. I tried
sleeping through the notion that the recorder was a prank.
My hands refused that self comfort meh, May, this is
cabin sat in. You laughed it out, you would The
radio repeated a warp decho. Josh pressed his forehead to
the screen of the sliding door and pointed lights at
the tree line. I walked to the window. The duck
between the pines had two pale pimprikes that moved like
someone with a flashlight. The pinpricks drifted, then vanished. The
recorder on the table ticked. Once the problem went from
abstrews to immediate danger. Someone or something was using familiar
voices to move us. I unlatched a cupboard under the
sink because the list and the wall had to be
matched with evident Inside, I found missing camper flyers. They
were pinned in a neat row. Photos lined the cork,
smiling faces, age ranges, hair that caught the flash wrong.
One photo had been scrubbed with a razor where a
fis should be. There was white paper and ralph edge
scrap under the film of dust. A damp SMI glinted
along the photo labeled Ruth. A hair line crack in
a photo's lamination match to patten on my thumb when
I had pressed a real card. I put the scap
to my nose and smelled the same glue as the tape.
The scream on the recorder match Drew's photo in timing
and tone. That changed the tape for a prank into
a warning. Ruth went missing two summers ago. I told
Josh they marked her by seven. Josh didn't answer for
a beat. Then he said, we get the tape, we go,
we tell May in the morning. We argued for two
minutes and short lines Josh we leave it, we take it.
If we take it, what if it follows us if
we leave it? What if it lear some one else?
The exchange tightened like a rope. In the end, Josh
shoved the tape into his jacket. He proof with untea
leaf proof. His grin was a shield. I stood with
my hands on the stove and thought of choices as
physical things. The radio of the laminated card, the recorder
of the tape folded in Josh's pocket. Suspicion pushed at me.
That suspicion turned into a second shift of a motion.
When the cabin door banged shut. The door slammed, as
if August had hit it. I turned fast. The lock
had not been turned. My breath hitch. Voices started on
the other side of the wood. A female voice, the
cadence of counselor May, calling into the night. Ye kids,
come back. The voice was wrong and timing it mashed
phrases from the tape. Josh beat at the door and swore.
He ran to the back window and pushed the sash upward.
He leaned out, and his flashlight scanned the marsh. Footprints
led away from the cabin into the red line and
stopped at the edge of black water. None returned Josh.
I shouted, Josh, where are you? He looked at me
and his eyes were wide. There, Prince, they go in,
they don't come back. Panik moved through me. Panic made
my fingers camp on the window frame until the wood groaned.
I grabbed the cupped handle and wrenched it up and again.
In the back, under a jar of nails, another recorder lay, smaller, older,
the label taped to it with the date that read
to Morrow's date in a hand I recognized for its
quick slash my own name. My mouth went dry. I
read the hand, dritting outlaw because I needed sound that
much sense. It says my name tomorrow. I felt a
new emotion, then dread, turning to a cold, methodical urgency.
I had to act. That was a change from doubt
to her need for control. I moved to the recorder.
I could look for wires, for speakers, for some mechanical trick. Instead,
I heard Josh Green from outside, and the sound was
swallowed almost immediately by static from the larger machine on
the table. The recorder clicked to a new track and
played the last two seconds of Josh Green in exact cadence.
I ran to the porch. The marsh was churned in dark.
My footprints overlapped joshes in places and then stopped where
it did. There was no sign of him beyond the
reef line. My watch read one hundred seven. The sky
was low and pale with cloud. I called his name,
no answer. I took the older recorder from my jacket
pocket and tried to rewind it. The tape stuck like
a muff cot between words. The label with my name
had a smear across pot of the letters, like some
one had tried to erase the word and failed. I
tried the radio again. Mus's voice came back, clearer in
my name, and then static. Don t ticket leave it
may This is couten seven. Josh is missing. He shouldn't he,
half the speaker said, and then the full sentence that
matched the tape played, he vanishes at one point seven.
You leave a recorder on the dock at dawn. My
hands tightened on the radio. I felt the room tilt
between two choices, full ow instruction and survive, or fight
the loop and risk losing more. That was the second
major emotional shift, control seeking to resign calculation, I chose action.
I ran toward the dock because the tape's voice had
given a directive, and because decisions paralyzed less than an action.
I stuffed the recorder that had my name into my jacket,
tucked the smaller one in my back pocket, and shoved
my hands into the and to warn them. The duck
bolls creaped under my weight. Miss sat on the water
like a low sheet, the lake reflecting a pale smear
of the moon. I left a tape in the dark.
I did not write a neat note. I pushed a
scrap of paper under the recorder with a hurried scroll.
Take this, tell some one. Then I walked away. The
motion felt wrong. It felt like obeying the voice that
had sent Joshuay My legs move because people move at DNN.
The air pinch cold. I walked back to the cabin
the long way around the reed bed, because someone might
still be out there. I searched a marsh with a flashlight.
Huntel arms ached. I called me and left a message
because her number was the one that had been used.
I said, mate, Josh is gone. He was lost. At seven.
The answering machine swallowed the words and returned a snippet
of the tape, my own voice saying a phrase I
had not yet spoken aloud that folded my belief into
a new knot. I had to make more choices. When
I returned to the cabin, the recorder on the table
was not where I had left it. The larger unit
had been moved to the window, sill ankleed to the
marshes if it had been played to listen. The laminated
wool card had be knocked to the floor. My watch
face was wet around the glass. I found on the
bulletin board a stack of flies I had not seen before.
They were copies of the tape's notes, typed and photocopied.
Some one had scold lined in the margins, do not
bring it home, do not play alone, leave it doc.
I read one line and hitched a laugh that had
no humor. The margin hand ready matched the slant of
my own writing that was settled in the tape did
more than record, It issued instructions. It used no invoices
to kept people to obey those instructions, and the instructions
directed movement toward the dock and away from escape. I
argued with myself, maybe we can burn it. I said aloud,
burn it. Josh's voice came from the back stoop in
my memory, and then from emptiness. What if burning it
makes it louder? I moved through the cabin, checking the rooms.
Each time I found an ordinary object to stare, and
empty coffee cups slid to the table, a chair pulled
back as if some one had stood. And each time
I found a small, precise detail that told a story.
A smear of mud and the hem of a curtain,
a loop of twine knotted and cut. I thumperned in
the recorder's casing. These were not metaphors. They were evidence
that some one had passed through the cabin in a
pattern that matched the Tippis tracks. I called May again,
with my hand shaking, I stole quickly, using names and times. May,
this is urgent. Josh is missing. I found a tape
that names me for tomorrow, please come. The radio answer
came a minute later, with May's voice tired, exact, tell
me everything, start with the tape, I did. I told
her about the laminated rolle, the scrubbed photo of Ruth,
the second recorder with my name, Josh's disappearance. The footprints
had ended at the marsh. As I spoke, I moved
round the cabin, pointing my flashlight at the cork, at
the stove, at the chair where the recorder had sat.
I used concrete gestures because that made the tarrort into work.
I could do mishort clipped questions. Her interrogation felt like
a rope I could hold. When did you press stop,
she asked? When I first heard the screen, did Josh
touch the small recorder, Yes, he put it in his jacket. Danty,
go back out to night day where you are. Lock
the door. I will call base. Her voice snapped off.
The call ended with a promise that felt paper thin.
I switched a radio back on and found static. The
larger recorder and the soul started up again without my touch.
It played two words, clear as to glass leave it.
I put my palm on the window and swallowed. I
had to make choices that night that I had never
imagined making. Those choices were practical. Lock her, open, move her, stay,
call a silence. Each choice altered the ship of the next.
At some point before dawn, I fell asleep, sitting on
the couch with the recorder in my lap. When I woke,
light had bled through the curtains and the dock tape
was gone. My jacket pockets were lighter. The air of
the cabin had new prints, small like nail's pressing. I
found a note tucked in the dinim of my jacket,
where my elbow wristed. It read one sentence in a
hand I did not know and did not fully trust.
You leave a recorder on the dock at dawn, you
do not follow. I tossed a note on the table.
I could fill the shift inside me from fear to
a brief, brittle clarity. I would not follow the command
of following men losing more. I would not become another
name on the board. That was the third emotional turn,
fear into rais a need to choose differently. I walked
the path to the dock with the other recorder in
my hand. I opened it and recorded a single message
in my own voice. If you find the snow, I
tried to stop it. I left a note I can tease,
ay Moore, do not play it alone. The tape took
my words and swallowed them in a hiss. I closed
the flap and left the recorder on the planks, And
this time I did not push a scrap under it.
I pressed my thumb to the recorder until the plastic
left a mark. I walked away fast. My feet slapped
the boars. The dock thrown the lake did not respond
back at the trail. Josh's cigarette but was still in
a dirt where he had dropped it. The marshet swallowed
his footprints. I sat on a stump and briet air
that tasted like iron and tape clue. I tried to
imagine an explanation that fit all the details. A prank,
a cruel experiment, a tethered deck over, a missing girl's panic.
Each dear we failed to fit at least one observable fact.
May arrived mid morning with two councilors in a sheriff's deputy.
She brought a box of official forms and a cruelty
in her jaw that said she had seen worse. She
for my statement and wrote down everything I said. She
looked at the small recorder and the smear on the
forhto encircle dates. When she said we filed for Ruth
is ongoing, it felt like a paper door closing. Ruth
became an item in a file and not a voice
on a tape. Did you see anyone else. May no,
I said, did you touch the recorders? Yes? I turned
one off and then the other was in my jacket.
May did not lift her eyes when the forum. Then
we will lock that, we will call the camp director.
We will tape the cabin and the dock. Her tone
was business like. Her actions changed things. That was another twist.
May's administrative response moved the narrative from a private, impossible
event to an official record. Our choice to document meant
more people would know, that could protect, or it could
spread the thing that used voices to instruct. We waited
for the sheriff to come the marsh. I answered questions
until my voice warthin. I let them take the larger
recorder as evidence. I watched it go into an evidence
bag with a label written in block letters. I watched
the seal go across the back. A comfort rose when
the recorder entered the official custody. The comfort felt tact
hall and small. At mid day, the deputy came back
with the my crooksette and said nothing. At first, he
handed it to me. She held it and turned the
label toward the light. It had my name into Moro's date.
Her face empted. She we cannot play this if its evidence,
we log chain of custody and we bring it for
forensic analysis. The deputy's hand hovered near the bag. He
looked nervous and then resolvedly clinical. I listened as they
placed the items and sealed evidence boxes. Each cheel was
another small action that moved the problem into people who
made rules for danger. I felt relief and a different
hunger to know how the recorder predicted or shaped events.
The deputy left for the last evidence back mat took
me aside and said, you will not go near the
dock to night. You will stay in my cabin. I'll
sign a councilor to watch you. I did not want
to sleep in a room filled with other people. I
wanted to be alone and worked the problem. But the
counselor assigned a woman named Lillah had a steady voice
in the flasklight that cut the dark into manageable beams.
She sat with me and we shared a thermos of
When she asked what I wanted, I said, I want
the tape analyzed. I want to know why it says
my name. Lela nodded. Even with witnesses and paper and
official seals, the thing was not solved. That felt like
a slow, ongoing wound. At dusk, I walked back to
the dock with Lillah because my hands needed to touch
the place where a tape had been left. We found
Prince and the mud that were unfamiliar and headed away
from the dark, not toward the water. They led to
the tree line and then stopped. Leelah crutched and pressed
a gloved finger to the soil. No return Prince. It
matched Josh, I said he left footprints that stopped in
the reeds. She did not say his name again. Instead,
she put a hand on my shoulder and said, we
see the area. We call for more help. At night,
they moved the remaining campers into the lodge, may assigned shifts.
I slept with my watch on and my phone silent.
The tape that had my name was locked in evidence
with a chain of seals. I wrote down every detail
I could recall, and kiss memory became counterfeit. Before I
finally lay down, I put my hand into my jacket
and felt the smooth, hollow place where something had been.
The jacket was lighter. My pulse worked in my throat.
At dawn, I walked to the dock one last time.
The recorder I had left had been taken. In its
place lay a new slip of paper, folded once. I
picked it up and folded it with fingers that trembled
on a single line in my handwriting my slandered quick
scripped read If you play, you hear what you become.
I did not play it. I put the slip back
and walked away. I turned and left the dock with
the knowledge that the recorder had known my voice before
I spoke. I had left a message. I had left
a warning I had failed to save Josh. I had
sealed the recorder in evidence. I had given the sheriff
a bag and may report and Leelah Flashley. The fear
that began the night settled into an exhausted, brittle resignation
that guided my steps. I had moved through doubt, an urgency,
and a moment of action. Chapter closed with me and
the path away from the dock, my breath visible, my
hands in my pockets, and the feeling that something on
the tape had not finished using names. I stepped off
the dock and did not look back. The dock boards
creaked once under my weight. I walked into the gray morning,
and the recorder static remained sealed behind plastic and paper.
It's red light invisible now. My decision to leave the
recorder and the note was the last concrete action of
that night. I left a recorder at dawn and walked away.
I pressed the plastic plate button with my thumb and
heard my own voice scream. Before I had time to think.
Suspicion tightened my hands around the recorder as the hiss
of tape filled the cabin. Scream named the time and
said it plainly, Cabin seven. I had kept the rotten
porch door open moments before and seen the recorder already
running on the splinter table. Now the tape a moment
that had not yet happened, and used my voice to
do it. The suspicion that something in his place was
watching chores push me toward the recorder, and I leaned closer.
Despite every warning in my chest, I pulled the recorder
toward me and zat my elbow and the warp wood.
I checked the device with the impatience of someone who
still believed machines were simple. He yellowed plastic two spools,
turning a faint red light that wavered with the hiss,
the voice on the tape broke into words between static,
It's a midnight Cavin's evan dawn tea. The tape clipped,
then the scream came again, exacting raw, as if someone
in the room were choking on breath. I flinched and
knocked my neonal loose floorboard. My name belonged to the recorder.
My hands remembered the scar at my eyebrow when I
wiped it sweat. I said aloud, because silence made the
cabin feel like a measure trap. Who recorded this? There
was no answer in the room. The recorder kept whispering names,
as if flitting inventory. The first external clew arrived two
footeps later. A heavy boot printed wet mud on the porch,
half on the threshold and half gone into the dark.
I crouched and pressed my palm into the depression to
check moisture. It was fresh and soft under my fingers.
I stood and walked back to the table. The tip shifted,
and a second voice said slow through static, deryck, Maggie.
The tape announced time's alongside names. The times match missing
camper reports I'd seen pinned to the range of post
in town my throat tightened, few moved under suspicion. I
could not ignore, oh, the way the recorder cataloged people
like dates on a ledger. I slapped the stop button,
then turned it on again, because stopping felt like stepping
away from a crime scene that might keep erasing itself.
The tape kept listing names and times. Derek at two
point nine, a m. Maggie at three point twenty. A
third name rasped, and the tape hummed. Each name made
the room smaller. I shoved my hands into my jacket
pockets and tried to force a plan. My head lamps
sat on the chair back, strapped them from where I
had just slung it on. I picked it up, clicked it,
and an narrow cone of light cut across the cracked
ceiling and landed on the mess of handrid and notes
topped under the recorder. I took the notes ink, blow
it where moisture had hit the paper. The lis matched
the date, names and times scrolled in the same hand,
the same irregular slant beneath Derrek's name. Some one had
circled his time twice. The handwriting wasn't t mine, I said, Derrick.
The voice at the door, we answered, before he stepped
fully into the porch light. You answering the dier or what.
Derrek's voice was flat, the edge of annoying, sharpened by nerves.
He kept his jacket sip to his chain, and his
breath came in short claws that fogged the porch light.
I didn't say i'd a come back, I said. I
set the notepad on the table and slid the recorder
toward him so it caught the porch light. The recorder
recorded the scrape of my sleeve like proof. Derek moved
to the table and leaned over the device. You hit play,
he asked, I did I heard myself. I kept my
voice level, the tape hiss beneath us. My hands found
the recorder's corners, as if holding it might anchor reality. Derek,
this place is messed up. We never should be dared
each other. You doubt me, Dereck. You drive out people
here for stupid points and beer. He were the one
who said we'd make it a story. At a pause
filled with the tap esque soft noise, Derek's draw tightened,
I said, I go back and get Maggie. That's all.
I only came to check on her, Maddie, I started, yes, Mammy,
she took my flufflet earlier. I was going to Derek
stopped and looked at the recorder. He you sure that thing?
Isn't he messing with us? He wrapped his fingers around
the record as plastic, and his hand shirk. His voice
dropped a half step. I heard a pick up an
old gild. You and me both know I shouldn't he
have dead? That night, the second external event hit like
a cold slap when my phone vibrated against the table.
Ranger Hanks's name flashed on the crack screen. I answered,
with the phone pressed to my eberigus to talking in
front of DERC. Felt like we were both part of
whatever we'd awaken, Hank, I said. Ranger Hank's voice came
through thin and heard. We found another recorder on the dock, empty,
had shell but running. Some one left it near the
rotted plank by the ladder. He paused, and then added,
The last voice on that tape is yours. It says,
I swear to God to help me. It's happening now.
The time stumped, and the note was thirty five minutes
from now. Who's a cabin seven? I told him I
was inside. I told him Deryck was there. My mouth
felt dried. Hank's fo stay clipped, duntee move stapo. I'll
bring a couple of searches. Keep that recorder on. If
it nams, some one write it down. Dun'tee hand it
to any one else. I looked at Deryck. He Hank called,
that's bad. He sounded like he saw the dog. He
my voices on the tape, I said. Derek's eyes widened.
He dropped his hand to the table. Then we shouldn't
be illumined. He looked at the doorway, and then at me.
We should get out now. I started to agree, and
then the tape excelerrated on its own. The spow spun faster.
The room filled with small sounds exactly as they were happening.
The chair creak when Derek stood, the scrape of shoes
on wood, the wind shift that threaded the porch. Every
tiny noise from our bodies was being echoed in the
recorder with an extra thinner layer of static. I felt
it like a second skin. The tape began to play
a sound that I recognized because it matched the present.
The sharp intake of breath I had made when the
recorder sped up. Then the tape played a scream not
recorded earlier, but time to erupt in the next second,
the scream that the tape had already produced and the
room was about to produce simultaneously. Derek's face went white.
He turned it off, Turn it off. Now. His words
were short, no more than three. I slammed my thumb
down and the stop and the tape clicked, but the
echoed scream still rode the tail of the static. We
both froze as something moved across the threshold. It wasn't
a shit. I saw low, slow shift, like the curtain
of a damp blanket being called aside. The center of
the door we filled with a presence that made the
haze along my forearms lift. I had no time to
name the feeling beyond move a push past deryck and
shoved the door wide. We ran. The fog swallowed our boots,
and the board creaked under us like a warning. Derek
stumbled on a loose blank dropped, and I growed for
his arm. He slipped from my grip and went down
into the brush, where the fog drank the sound of
him hitting the leaves. I shouted his name until my
voice was hoarse, and the trees gave nothing back. A
cross threw the saplings toward the dock because the lake
was the only flat line I could imagine. Following. My
hands found the railing slick with dew. The recorder was
not in my hands. The red light pulls on a
recorder lying on the edge of the dock. Recorder I
had left inside the cabin seconds before, I had left
it on the table. Now it blinked like a heartbeat
and played a broken loop of our flight. The tape
on the dock recorded the exact scream we'd heard in
the cabin, and the new sounds of my breath and
my shoes on wood. The recorder had been moved or
copied at its event. Ranger Hanks ell lecal came over
my phone again, this time with him out of breath.
We found a record a tuck between the planks, and
the last voice is he saying I can tea Then
as Green, Who else is there? Derrick? I said he tripped,
he fell into the trees. I lost him. There was
a silence on the line. Hanks stay on the dock,
Dante go after him. We'll get a team here. Nobody
touched the recorder. If you can move away from the
edge and keep your light on, I pressed my forehead
into the cold wood and tried to force rational steps.
My pulse hammered under my jaw. Fear shifted into a tight,
focused urgency that made my hands clutter. Check the recorder,
Check the label, Check for any marks. I picked up
the recorder's case a new stick. Your label clung to
it where none had been before. On the label, was
it time stamped? And heard black ink? The time read
three hours from now. I slaved my thumb over the ink,
as if I could smudge it away. The label was dry.
I felt a weave grow from my knees to my shoulders.
The urgency that had moved my hands hardened into a cold,
practical logic. If the tape predicted events, it was cataloging futures.
If a cataloged features, then as times might be schedules.
I forced myself to name the options out loud. We
either stopped this, or we run and hide, we get help,
or we try to find Deryck. The sentence sounded like
bargaining with a machine ranger. Hanks team arrived with lights
bobbing like low satellites. They called our names. Deryck's jacket
was found snacked on a low branch, torn on the hem.
The searchos looked around the forest floor and found footmarks
that led away from the cabin and then disappeared near
the water line. An took the recorder from me without
gloves and set it in the dock. He didn't he
play it right away. We need evidence, he said, We
need to know what's recorded. One of the searches, Rosa Nelson,
pointed at the damp paper I had pulled from under
the recorder. These are and tea notes for pranks. She said,
this is dates and times, This is planning. Rose's voice
had a blunt, utilitarian calm. Her hands worked without hesitation. Derrick,
she asked, he fell into the brush and didn't come
back up. I said, I called for him. He vanished.
Rosa met my own eyes. Did you see anyone? She asked, No.
I said the word, and then told them about the tips,
screaming my name. Hank's face did tea change. He was
a man who had dealt with missing campus for a
long time. He ran his thumb along the recorder's edge.
If the tape is predicting, then the label could be
a schedule. We catalog what we find and we try
to preempt it. We write down every name, and every
time we stay in a group, no one goes alone.
Hank used orders to stitch a plan. He assigned two
searchers to groid the tree line. Roses stayed in the
dock with me. Two others took about to circle the
near shore. We were a small cage of human sound
in a lake of fog and potential. The tape's prediction
hung over us like an instruction. We wrote names on
scrap paper. I added Maggie and Derek in a handful
of other campers whose names the tip had spat out earlier.
We wrote times beside each name and folded the papers
so the ink wouldn't a smear in the dam. Bear
night stretched. The searchers called back minimal reports. Empty footprints
are Torn's leave a faint smell, like wet cloth hung
on the wind. Each report was an external event that
forced action. Each note of discovery tightened the news of
our choices. I soarted to think of the tape as
an operating manual of threats. It colored our movement suspicions
layered into dread and then into a brittle insistence to act.
I could not sit and watch a schedule unfold. Ato
in the morning rose it and I sat with thermoses
of coffee and the recorder between us. I kept my
hands in the device. The metal felt cold through the plastic. Shee,
why do you come back? The question was small, simple,
and it landed like a stone, because I thought answers
lived in the place that scared us. Before I said,
my voice was flat. I tried to avoid giving a long,
tidy reason. I knew the truth. I had been trying
to prove to myself that nothing supernatural could use my voice.
That was a bad, stubborn pry rosaline back. You and Deryck,
you both have that same stupid streak, he me. Once
he started all the dares, he blamed you for not stopping.
He didn't. He weighed me. Then I said, he blamed himself.
My mouth tasted like Alton. The memory of that night
when we had first burst into Cabin seven with flashlights
and beers rose with precise, concrete images. The way derec
lt a cigarette on the porch, the sound of Maggie laughing,
too loud in the bunk room, the smell of spilled
cola on the counter. Those moments were real and anchored.
The recorder had turned them into clues on a time line.
We argued quietly about Joyce, as you think this is punishment, Rosa.
I don't think it's moral, I said, I think it's mechanical.
It records and then it sets times. It's counting down
to events it already knows. Rosa. Then stop being the
only ones who can be scheduled, Danty, be the ones
who go to the predicted places high Dante followed the tape.
She bit off the words like someone shopping a rope.
But if some one's out there, if some one is it,
then we tapped the user. We set bait. Our plan
was quick and sharp. Leave a dummy recorder on the
dock with no label, and wait. If the recorder moved
or a label appeared, we'd have evidence of operation. We
drove a nail into the dock planks and wrapped the
device cord so we could pull it in the dark.
Hank agreed. He set his radio to monitor. I felt
the shift from private panic to organized pressure. The urgency
had turned into tense focus. A little after three in
the morning, the bait screamed. It played a half second
of static, and then a voice, low, wet and coughing, said,
don't tea, go to the water. The voice wasn't t mine,
It wasn't he dear x. Roses wore hankers softly. The
tape then played the sound of heavy boots and a
west slap on wood. The board and the dock groaned
under weight. Someone or something walked along far side of
the pier, and the noise moved away. We sprang to
our feet and trained light on the tree line. Figures
slid between trunks like animals. The radio crackled with hanks orders.
We moved as a unit, fee beading a path through
mad We found prints in the soft death that circled
away from the dock and stopped at the old boathhouse.
The boathouse door hung half open, the hinges rusted inside.
The dark smelled like gasoline and iron. Rosa pushed the
door with her shoulder. The beam of her light found
an overturned tackle box in a single bootprint that led
to a ladder. Neither Derek nor Maggie was there. On
the ladder, rung. Someone had left a scrap of paper
an aim at a time. The name was Deryck. The
time matched the tyn stamp we'd seen earlier, and the
label now glued to the recorder of the dock. The
twist hit like a thrown stone. The paper's handwriting matched
the list from the cabin. The person who had cataloged
names had also left instructions. Someone had been creating a timetable.
That someone had moved the events outward, from the cabin
to the dock to the both house. The way the
evidence writy together changed how I understood the cabin's first tape.
It was not just predicting, it was broadcasting events outward,
making them real long a trail. We argued in quick lines,
He's alive somewhere Rosa. We either find iac or we
stop the recorders from making more labels. Hank, we can't
keep reacting. What if it's not a person, someone asked
from the edge of the boathouse. Then we treat it
like a pattern and break the pattern, Hank answered. He
set his draw and began issuing orders. We split into
teams and moved with a practice coldness that came from
people trained to separate fear from action. When we returned
to the dock after sweeping the both house, the original
recorder's red light had begun to blink with the speed
that felt impatient. I picked it up. The new label
was their time, scrolled two eyes away. The tape inside
was warm under my palm, I felt a tightness. It
wasn't asleep. It was one of those dissolving edges were
hoped in into something like acceptance. I lifted the microphone
on my phone and spoke into it with clipped words,
recording a brief warming to leave the place alone, unclear
notice who had stayed behind. I left the recorder on
the dock and stepped back fast enough that my shoes
slipped on wet planks. I watched the red light blink.
I watched Tank tape the label into his note book.
The searchers shouted distant findings into radios. The event had
worn down but not ended the schedule, and the label
sat there like a clock waiting to be started. Dawn
arrived as a gray wedge. The fog thinned and horizontal
strips and the legs showed as flat dark. I walked
away from the dock with the thermos in my hand
and my phone recording the sky in case the tape
tried to make noise of the light. I had made
a choice to leave evidence and to leave the recorder behind,
because taking it with me felt like carrying the instrument.
At set the times, the light over the dock tone
pale and then brighter. My shoes left clear wet in
the path back. When I reached the road, I turned
and looked back once the recorder's red light still pulsed,
but the new label, the one with the future time
at a second smaller line written under it, a name
I did not recognize in a time a few minutes
after the one stamp for me. They swallowed and kept walking.
The three men from Hank's team called my name. I answered.
I walked toward the truck and felt something settle, like
a decision mate. Because action was necessary, I drove away,
with Rosa beside me, hand wrapped around her thermos. As
fixing the road, I said, we left the recorder on
the dark, we left notes, We hank everything. I kept
my voice, even Rosa pressed her lips together and said good.
Now we wait and see which of those two schedules
fires first. Then we move. She touched my arm in
a quick, practical way that meant will keep moving. I
did not sleep that day. I sat in the passenger
seat and watched the lake, and when my frond burst,
I answered with my fingers trembling. It was a message
from an unknown number with a single line a time
that matched the one on the recorder's label. Mytham hovered
over the keyboard. I did not respond. The chapter ends
with me standing at the edge of the dock again
at dawn, watching a red light blink and slipping my
foot into my jacket pocket while I walked back toward
the truck. With a single concrete action, I turned and
placed my palm on the recorder, left in the planks,
felt its warm plastic under my hand, and then stepped
away and walked until the dock was small behind me.
The cassette and the dock was already running when marshev
the board aside and shouted my name. Suspicion tightened my
hands around the recorder before I even reached for it.
The player hissed a voice spoke three names in a
time that concrete sound. Derrick morra Me made the conflict immediate.
We had a running tape that near us, and we
had to decide whether to chase an explanation or run.
I pushed off the dock and stepped into the reeds
to cut the distance between the recorder and whatever had
left it. I had been the one to kick open
Cabin seven's rotten portch earlier that night. I had found
a corrider on his splinter table and saw it already playing.
That is the fact I held like a wet cloth
against my foot. The recorder on the dock was the
same model, the same yellow plastic, the same faintsmea where
a handred in the label had been torn away. I
was twenty seven, at work summers as a counselor, and
I knew how campranks ran. But the recorder said my name.
Saying my name changed the problem from prank to threat.
Turned it off. Derek. He came up the path, breathing fast,
handshoved into his jacket pockets. He my name when he
reached me, Alex Dante. His voice cut across the hisslick
a line through a map. It named you too. Mara answered,
without looking at Derek. She crouched at the recorder, fingers
hovering over the plastic play button. Mara's jaw was set
the way it gets when she decides not to be scared.
Derek's shoulders were hunched, the way he does when he
blamed first and thinks later. Those are the small repeatable
facts I rely on. When I tried to explain what
follow I thumbed the tape s edge and heard a
second bull click. The voice shifted. It didn't he speak
in sentences. First it ran through a list of pictures,
a porch, a half melted candle, a boat print near
the water. Then the voice said, Derek, midnight, marraw shoreline,
Alex Dunte, turn your back. The record was built in
red light blink. Once Derek grabbed the recorder from me,
Who the hell left this? He asked. His voice was short,
His anger was a tool he used to push away fear.
He scanned the shoreline with his flashlight beam, darting over
the lap in black water and the slick planks of
the dock. We didn't leave it here, ah ah, We
came straight from the path. We only dared each other
to knock on cabin seven. Her breath showed in the
flashlight's beam. You kicked the door in a lex you
want to prove, I said nothing. My palm had gone
damp where I'd held the recorder. I remembered the porch
door I've kicked open, the splinters that sprayed my knuckles,
the recorder on the table, already playing a backward shriek.
That memory was a physical thing, a wooden grain under
my finger nails, the taste of lake rot in my mouth.
I did not invent it. Now, it had already happened.
So it's a set up direct. Somebody's messing with us,
some kid playing a prank. Right, mar looked at him
and then at me. If it's a prank, it's two precise.
Whoever did this new our names. They know the dare.
They knew you've kicked the porch Alex, they knew her
sentence stopped when the tape clicked into a fresh bowl,
and a human scream split the night. The scream was mine,
not a memory of my scream, not a scare actor imitation.
It was my vocal pattern, the same hitch at the
end when I lose birth. It rose and cut off
at a single syllable. I shoved past them both and
ran toward the cabin path. Record a clutch to my chest.
My suspicion hardened into urgency. I was not running because
I believed the vorse. I was running because the tape
had moved. First. If the tape made future noise, we
had to see where it came from that sentence. We
had to see bekin the engine for everything I did. Next,
we reached the cabin without talking. Derec glimpsed lightly from
an old Nebrew's Ma kept glancing back at the dock.
I get the recorder lowless name. The poch light over
cabin seven was dead. The hinges still moaned. When I
pushed the broken door to rest of the way open.
Inside the living room, damp would smell sharp and clean.
The notebook lay in the crate by the stove of
its pages, water slick at the corners. I had found
the same notebo cur laer and thumbed through it, without
understanding that earlier reading was a concrete action. I saw
theates written in the same scroll, names listed under them,
like inventory. To night. The notebook was open to a
new page. Freshenk blood into the fibers. Watch this morror,
she pointed with the beam of her head lamp. Two
names had been circled in heavy black. Her last name
in Deryck's first. My own name was under line twice
below them. What are the dates, Deryck, murrid aloud slow
jan fourteenth June, seventeenth July second. They end with times.
These are when people didn't he come back. The radio
in the corner crackled. Inger Harlow's voice came through cors
and flat. Do not stay at the sight, he said,
Static tunnelt his words and stole syllables. Get to the road,
A line cut clean. Derek's slumed, his fist against the crate.
That's it, We leave now. Mara's eyes flicked to the window.
We can leave, Derek, not like this. Her hand went
to the back of a note because off to shield it.
They argued in short bursts, three lines at a time,
harsh and fast. Derek, you heard hollow. We need to go.
Marr the name like a defense. We can tea. Just
take our stuff and run, Derek shut back. Someone's been hit,
someone's been writing names. Who's to say they want? He
follow us? Then call Hallow, Marr, call him and wait
pohe instead no service. Are you sure, MARRR? Yes, I'm sure.
The argument pushed the moment forward. It was not introspection,
but force choices. Derek decided they would leave. Mara decided
to insist on looking for more evidence. I felt the
pull between them and pulled toward the middle. My hands
tightened on the recorder. My roll shifted from reluctant leader
to someone who might be useful. We moved through the
cabin of quick practical motions. Mara checked the crates. Derek
pried opened the old cupboard for cairns. I kept watching
the windows and the radio, listening for any new hiss
of voice that might name a place for a step.
Every three or four paragraphs of our movement, something external happened,
a flashlight being found, the footprint, the pie went out
to cassette clicked a great gave way. That pace kept
us on the edge. A blackout swallowed the cabin like
a thumb over a lamp. The sudden absence of light
made our breathing audible. Marra stepped onto the porch to
fine matches. The potchboard sighed under her weight. She froze
and whispered footprints fresh leading away from the shore toward
the trees. The recorder on the table began to play
on its own. A voice said proximity three meters, a countdown,
nine minutes. A mechanical wine underlaid the voice. Derek swore,
we need to smash it, Dereck. He grabbed the recorder
and brought his palm down over the top. The plastic
cracked against the heel of his hand. Stop my voice
was short, command, dundee. Derec looked at me as if
I had broken a rule. He swung again and struck
the recorder. The bottom popped off, the cassette inside spun
loose and skittered across the floor. The sound stopped for
a single long bath. The cabin held silence. Then a
box at the back of the cause It slid forward,
triggered by the shifted weight in the room. The box
stumped against the wall and skittered open. There were more players,
a cred of them. He triggued to start. When the
first failed, one flipped on, and a fresh tape threaded
itself through the player. The new label had three initials
scrolled across it. Dereck swallowed, who the hell. Morrow's hand
went to her mouth. Alex, your initials are on that one.
I pulled the tape free with two fingers. It fell damp.
A map fell out and unfolded in my lap, a
rough sketch of the campsite, with a rough marked in
chocoal to the shore line and one looped arrow pointing
to the dock. Someone had circled cabin seven and written
in the same hurried hand, bring them close to the loop.
A fight burst between Derek and Murray. Then it went
rapid fire. Six short exchanges were blame roksheted back and forth.
It was a dare Derek's bat You want to proof more,
answered Alex opened the porch. Derek jawed at me with
the fact we all came here. I said, we all
chose to knock. My words were plain. I refused to
let the argument become a list of who was guilty.
They kept shouting. Each line landed like a stone. The
anger was a lover that shifted our options. Derek insisted
on leaving. Mar insisted we needed to see the shoreline.
I could have sided with either and made the patrial.
I chose neither. I chose to what the map. Instead,
we moved toward the waterhead with the recorder in my jacket.
The map folded in my pond. The night pressed against
our backs. The shore smelled of algi and old rope.
The tide pushed at the dock in small, patient fingers.
At the shore line, the recorder played a new track.
It spoke the exact pattern of my breathing when I
am frightened. It alex run, and then it played a
screen that I recognized as my own, longer and raggular
than before. The sound did not come from the sky
or a speaker. It came from a point behind us
in the mud flats. Derek laughed, but it was the
wrong laugh and nervous noise. This is getting staged, some kids,
some set up. We trapped them. We call Harlow. In
the morning, Mars stepped closer to the water and found
oppressions in the mud, boot shreads that started at the
dock and stopped a shallow groove in the reeds. She
crouched and traced one with her glove finger. They stopped here,
she said. Then nothing as shape hive up from the
water's edge, like something pushing free. It moved too smuly
for person at first, a slow integrating slide. Dirrec grouted
it and his hand closed on wet fabric. The thing
did not look like a man. It did not look
like dear fur or a fallen lock. For the first second,
I thought it was a body half swallowed by the reed.
But then it shoved in Dirk's arm. Once lack, he
was being pulled toward the water. The force came from
his ankle, tugging him in with a pressure that felt
like a rope tightening a round bone. He kicked and cursed.
Marra lunged Derrec. She screamed and grabbed the back of
his jacket. I growed her other sleeve. Let go. Dereck snarled.
Then his voice broke it pulls arm. I grabbed Derc's
forearm where the sleeve had torn, where the fabric clung
to the mud. My finger slid on alg. The recorder
in my jacket thuded against my ribs. The tape from
early vibrated like an insect. On three, I said, my
voice was flat. I did not believe counting would matter,
but counting made usack together. One morrow, two, Derec choked.
On three, I hold with both hands. Derec came forward
a foot, then free. Something called brushed my shins, and
the mud ripped at my boots. I heard a sound
like a mouse pulling from wet leather, a dragging sound
that left marks in the sand. Derec collapsed on to
the dock and calwled away from the water with hysterical
gulping breaths. He looked like some one who had been
under water too long. His hair clung to his forehead,
and his lips, where blue was cold. We sat there
for a beat, the three of us panting. The recorder
kept hissing, as if embarrassed that it had been interrupted.
But then it click and a new voice lay appealed through,
not the recorded voice, but a whisper under the tape,
a delayed echo of missinging a line. I knew I'd
never said. You can end it, the whisper said, in
my tone, close the loop, record it, say the warning,
say the name, finish the tape. Marris stood up so
fast she swayed what Derek pushed himself to his feet.
We burned the things, Throw them in the fire. There's
no fire left, I said. The shack had no fuel,
no light. I held up the damp map. The loop
arrow in a map seemed to burn on its own.
The recorder at my chest clicked again. A small red
light blinked. The whisper layered over the hiss changed into
a simple instruction, record your vorice, save them by warning,
close the loop. A cold, logical panic flooded through me.
If the tape could play feature screams, then perhaps recording
my own voice, an act designed to stop the thane,
would not stop it at all. Perhaps it required me
to complete a ritual. That thought shifted my fear into
a new feel. Obligation. Suspicion had started me panick made
me run. Obligation, a quieter, heavier state made me consider
doing the thing the tape demanded. Mara grabbed the recorder
from my jacket without asking. Her fingers were firm. You
want to do it, Alex, she said. It was little
more than a statement, but it was a decision. She
set the device on the dock and put the microphone
close to her mouth. If it's a loop, then I'm
not letting it usee you. Derec's hands trembled, mardunte, don't
he talking to it? She flipped the small switch and
the machine word. Her voice came out, thin and steady.
This is Mara Haines. If you find this tape, do
you not go alone? To cabin seven. Do not answer
coals that start with static. Leave the recorder where it lies.
She spat the words as if they were a shield.
The recorder paused. Then a new scratch of ayer of
sound folded into the track. A second later, a voice
that sounded like ranger hollow, not enough, it wants closure.
Dereh hit the recorder with the heel of his hand.
The player stuttered and died. For a moment, we all laughed,
because the laugh felt like reclaiming the night. Then a
light flared at the far side of the shore, and
a shape pushed out of the trees. It didn't lock.
It stood in step with a gathering release. It matched
the rhythm of a tape's beats. It moved toward the
dock with an even pace. When it reached the water line,
it turned its head slowly and looked directly at me.
I saw the face then, not human in proportion. The
features were too long, the mouth of thin seam, but
the face of my eyes, as were my hazel irises
reflected in mud the sun. I hit me like a
physical blow. Alex, the creature said, in my voice, close
the loop, finish it. I had two choices, and both
of them were action. One was to run and never
speak into any recorder again. The other was to speak
into the recorder and hope that my words could alter
the sequence. I had watched Derec almost drown. I had
seen Marr deside to act. Her choice had pulled him
away from the water. That action had changed the immediate danger.
If I spoke, my voice could change the sequence too.
The obligation that had nudged me earlier shifted into resolve.
I moved forward with the tape recorder in my hand.
The creature watched without blinking. The dog felt narrower with
every step. My chest hut where my jacket rubbed the
recorder's case. I set the recorder on the walk board
and held the microphone close to my mouth. This is
Alex Carter, I said, keeping my sentence ashore. If you
find this, do not come to Cabin seven at midnight,
Do not follow the shoreline, leave the tapeway you find it,
and do not play it alone. Call the renger. My
voice shook in the last two words, but I forced
it flat. Each line and I recorded felt like a
pastor across a wound. The creature did not move its
head tilted as if hearing something only it could hear.
The recorder clicked as it rw wand my hands were
steady enough to fasten the cap back and the microphone.
Then it spoke again in my voice, thank you close
the loop, give them warning. Direct grabbed my shoulder and
pulled me backwards, so hot my feet left the boards.
He yanked me and more toward the panther. He hissed, Hollow,
get to the road. We ran without looking back. I
kept their recorder under my jacket like contraband the mat
slop burned behind my eyes. My emotion shifted again. Suspicion
had become panic, then obligation that a brittle resolve, and
finally numpished to survival. Dawn found me coughing in a
muddy ditch half a mile from the campsite. My jacket
was plastered to my chest. The recorder was in my pocket,
its red light dead. There was no sign of Derrick.
My legs trembled. When I climbed to the road. A
truck was idling at the turn round Ranger Hollow leaned
against it with a Thermas in his hand. He looked
older than I. Remain rembered hair gray at the temple's
eyes that had the halted, steady look of someone who
had seen a dozen things people called supernatural and then
had to clean up the rest. You are right, hallow.
He didn't wait for an answer. He opened his door
and offered me to warmth of the cab. Inside the truck,
the radio hissed. We sat for a long five breaths
without speaking. Then I pulled the recorder from my pocket
and played the tip one last time. A voice that
was mine said, if you find this tip, do not
go alone to cabin seven at mine. Do not answer.
Course that start was static. Leave the recorder where it lies.
Call the ranger. Beneath my voice. A whisper smiled in
my cadence. Close the lip. Heap them safe by warning them.
Hollow's jaw worked. He reached across and put his palm
over the recorder on my lap, as if to make
it small, inert. He did what you could, he said.
He did not say it loud. He did not need to.
I wanted to tell him about Derreck. I wanted to
say the name allowed, so that it would become a
fact instead of a rumor. The thing about names in
the noebucun and the tapes is that they make a
person reel. Saying Deryck's name would make him concrete to
the ranger. But I had no proof where Dierk was.
I had only the loop in my chest wood, a tape.
Whisperhead sat. Harlow climbed out of the truck and locked
the doors. We searched the shorel in a first light.
He said, we bring doaks, we follow footprints. We do
what we can. He the practical words of someone used
to chasing missing people. He did not ask how many
voices were on the tape. He did not ask whether
I had recorded mine. He simply reached into the glove
compartment and took have small paper bag. Inside was a damp,
folded map and a pen. He circled cabin seven and
wrote down a number the ranger station's emergency line. Keep
it with you, he said, his voice was low, and
keep the recorder with care. I'll call you if we
find Derec. He didn't. He promised to bring Derek back.
Harlo never promised things he couldn't he control. I sat
with the recorder between my knees and thought about the loop.
The tape had asked me to record a warning. I
had done it. That action felt like giving myself to
a machine that demanded human words. It felt like placing
a bandage over a living thing and helping the bandage
would halt. Harlow started the truck and we drove toward
the town. As we hit the paper at the radio popped,
Static filled the cap for a long second, and then
returned to silence. I held the recorder in my hand.
The little red light was dead, but a faint warmth
lingered when my pompressed the plastic a stop sign. Harlow
turned and looked at me. You're not going to put
this out where anyone will find it, are you. His
face was practical, but his eyes held the weight of
someone who had swallowed two many odd nights. No, I said,
the word was short. I had a different kind of
obligation now, to keep a warning from becoming a lure.
We keep it with the station, We log it. We
don't play it for prank hunters. He nodded and hunched
over the wheel. The recorder clicked under my fingers like
a heart. Two days later, the search teams found a
boot print trail that ended a flooded hollow, and then nothing.
They found drug marks in a torn jacket half buried
in reeds. They did not find Derrek's body. They found
and set another recorder beard under moss planks as tape
eaten by water. The notebook from Cabin seven was recovered
in pieces. The circled names we remained legible. Someone took
the notebook and sealed it in an evidence bag. Ranger's
log dates Hallow wrote a short report. At night, I
played the recording once more in the Range of Stations
evidence room with the lights off. I wanted to hear
my voice and the whisper together to test whether my
words had changed the pattern. The tape piste and folded.
Then my own voice came through cleanly. Did not go
alone to Cabin seven at midnight. Do not answer calls
that start with static. Leave the recorder where it lies,
call the ranger under it so faint I almost missed it.
A layer of sound repeated my phrase, and then added,
I warn them That extra line shifted me in a
way nothing else did. It wasn't he just an instruction
to others? It reframed my action into an admission. The
whisper's content implied that the tape wanted not only words,
but acknowledgment. In the days that followed, suspicion changed into
a weary responsibility. I found myself writing down names and
times for memory and adding them to a private list.
I began to check cabins in case someone had left
another recorder out of spite or out of a need
to warn. I learned two hard things. First, the tape
can imitate you enough that your voice ends up on
a track, and your voice can mean two things at once,
a warning and a demand. Second, doing what the tape
wanted did not stop the pattern from continuing. It altered
the immediate action. It did not end the machine that
set the sequence into motion. Weeks later, a park volunteer
brought me a photograph. It was a grainy shot taken
at the edge of the lake, the dock in a distance.
In the photo, three shadowed figures stood in the shore line,
Mara Derrick and another person I could not name. A
small square of light in the dock looked like a
recorder's red lamb. Someone had circled one of the shadows
and pen and written a name, not Deryck's, not mine.
A volunteer in the arko've said the person had never
been reported as missing. I keep the recorder in a
padded envelope. Now holler put it in evidence with a
note tape, a covered onor a none. Do not play
without an audiotype present. They mounted the envelope on a
shelfink he did under a case number. Sometimes, late at night,
I take it from the envelope and put the cap
back on the microphone. I press my to the speaker
and listen for anything new. Most times there was holy
silence in the faint clack of my wristworch. Once very faint,
there was a line under my voice I had not
noticed before, a deliberate, slightly amusedticer that said keep them
safe by warning them. That sentence change how I looked
at what I'd done. It made the choice real. I
had recorded a warning and endurance, So I had joined
a chain. Whether that chain save DIRC, I cannot say.
I have written his name into reports and into my
own note book, and I say it loud sometimes so
it does he slip into rumor. Saying his name is
a physical action. I moved my lips and hear the
syllables land. When the station closes for the night. I
walk out to the road and look back toward the lake.
The dock is a dark thumb against pale water. I
think about the map sloop, about the dotted trail we followed,
about the recorder on the table that was already playing
when I kicked the porch door open. I think about
Mara's voice on the tape, about Hollow's practical hands, about
Deryck's laugh when he still believed the world was a
place for jokes. The final fact of that night is
small and concrete. One morning, a handriton note appeared on
the back of the evidence form at the ranger office.
It read, if you find this tape, keep it secure
and warn others do not play alone. It was written
in a hand I did not recognize. Some one had
added it in pen and left it folded under the
evidence bag. I folded my own handwriting into the record
that day and added beneath it three names. Derec Cole, Marahines,
Alex Carter. I wrote to date. I stapled a note
to the file. I did not promise rescue. I made
a choice. I would keep the record a safe I
would post the evidence forward, and I would say the
names allow, so they could not be raised by silence.
When I left the station that night, Hollow called me back.
He handed me as mole sealed cassette in a paper bag.
We found this at the Lost shoal End search. He
said it was half buried. We think some one else
left it. I put it in my pocket. The tape
felt warmer than the others. The label had three initials
written in a rush. I read them under the truck's
stone light and saw my own initials included. Again. I
done to know if any word I spoke ever changed
what the tape wanted. I know only this A chose
to warn and to record the warning, and that action
put my voice into a chain I could not unlink.
The last thing on the cassette that night was a tiny,
dry sound, the click of a receding spool, and then
a line that sounded suspiciously like me saying, Dante go alone.
The recorder in evidence sits in a label box ranger's log.
Visitors who request to see defiles. When some one asks,
I tell them what I can. Where we found the devices,
which names circle, who left and who didn't tea. I
do not play the tapes for them. My hands are
stead are now. When I lift the envelope, my suspicion
has not left, but a share space with the responsibility
that presses my shoulders forward. The tape demanded closure. I
gave it words. That is the action I can halt.
The rest, the missing, the shapes and the reeds. The
voice that borrows my Kiden's remain in concrete details, footprints
in the mud, a torn jacket nailed to search a
photograph for a shadow circled and a name I haven't
been able to place. Uncertain nights, when the wind comes
in and from the lake and the pine's creek, I
hear a noise that might be a tip's hiss or
might be a truck radio, A thin static chime that
resolves for a second into my own voice, saying, if
you find this tape, keep it safe. I stand up
for from wherever I am, and I check my pockets
for the recorder. The action is habit new. I fold
my fingers around plastic that remembers my palm at dawn.
I still go to the shore line, sometimes alone, and
match bootprints against the ones in the report. I trace
a finger along the map where the loop ends at
the dock. I do not go to the dock after midnight.
I do not answer calls. They start with static. I
keep the recorder sealed. The final beat of that night,
the one that anchors everything, is simple and physical. Harlow
hands me a folded cassette in a paper back and
tells me they found new evidence at the shoreline. I
put the bag into my jacket and severe it tight.
The file is complete for the moment, but the recorder
on the shelf still waits. It waits in a box
with three named staple tourts. Outside. I can flip the
tape over and listen again, and sometimes I do. But
the last concrete thing in this chapter is my hand
closing over the paper back and walking away with it
toward the station. And that is the end. Thank you
for listening, and I will see you in the next one.