Speaker 1: Welcome listeners to Tales, a podcast that brings your short
stories to life. Do narrations, sound effects, and more. These
stories will be brought to you by different authors with
different writing styles, but with the same spooky vibes. So
lock your doors, check your closets, make certain there's nothing
lurking under your bed, and enjoy there are Tailor Officer
Michaels didn't believe in ghosts, not really sure. He enjoyed
the occasional horrorflic and yeah, sometimes the creeks in his
old house made him pause, But he was a cop.
Fear with something he'd learned to push down, just like grief,
just like ghost But when the voicemail played, he nearly
dropped the phone.
Speaker 2: Lucas, if you're hearing this, you need to go back.
It's awake again.
Speaker 1: The voice was calm and familiar. It was a voice
of someone whom he lost six years ago. It was Anna.
He listened to the message three times. Then he went
to the closet. Anna's things had stayed sealed all those years, untouched,
unspoken of. Grief is a strange kind of preservation. He
opened a warm leather box and found a small black
recorder tucked beneath a stack of folded clothes. It clicked
when he picked it up, as if it had just
finished rewinding. There was a note along with the tape recorder.
The note stated, you were never supposed to be drawn
into this, but if you have, I didn't make it.
He played the tape that night. Anna's voice was soft
but direct.
Speaker 2: We were researching cognitive imprinted, trying to isolate memory as
six Richeuell had the fund in and at Tech. But
we didn't realize we were turning it into something real,
something that was already out there. We captured it. Oh
maybe it let us think we had. We called it
Room thirteen let a room, a receiver, a prisoner, and Danny.
She was the only one that didn't break.
Speaker 1: Michaels froze. Danny Vega, the name Eli had said in
the station, the woman he had just seen.
Speaker 2: If this is playing, it means it's waking up again,
and she will be drawn back find her Lucas before
the town forgets again.
Speaker 1: Danny hadn't slept in three nights. The dreams were getting louder.
She saw Hallway's line with flickering lights. Monitors play in
loops of her face, and Eli younger strapped to a bed.
Anna whispered over a recorder, a voice she didn't remember
speaking in her voice. She awoke, screaming, hand behind her
ear with a mark always burned the hottest. When she
went to brush her hair, she saw it again, darkened,
now more defined. As Danny approached the building, she wasn't
surprised to see Officer Michael's waiting outside, two cups of
coffee in his hand, his postures still a stone. She
recognized him instantly, one of the officers who brought Eli
in weeks ago. His face stirred something in her, not
memory exactly, but a familiar shape she'd only seen in
her dreams, blurred repeated like an image on a loop.
I've found something, he said, as he handed her a
cup of coffee. Danny Vega looked exhausted. Shadows clung to
her eyes, and her hands trembled slightly. As she opened
the door, Michael stepped forward and opened it for her.
Without a word. She let him down the hall to
her office. There was no introductions, no awkward pleasantries that
only met once. For some things unspoken passed between them,
a recognition beneath the surface drawn not to each other,
but to the same creeping madness that seemed to follow
them both. A sense of urgency hung in the air,
heavy and unshakable. What have you found, Danny asked, a
tape from Anna. She mentioned you. I think I worked
with her. I don't remember, not clearly, but I think
I knew her. She said you were a part of it,
whatever they did down there, Room thirteen. Michael's nodded, we
need to find Eli. Eli had been watching Danny for days.
The boys had told him to wait, told him she
wasn't ready. But when he saw Officer Michaels walk through
her door, the static behind his eyes changed, pitch sharper, urgent.
It was time That morning. As sunlight bled through the trees,
Eli stepped from the woods and stood across the street.
The record in his pocket began to hum, soft, rhythmic,
like breath through tea. He waited. When Danny and Michael
stepped back through the door, something in the air change,
a snap of pressure, a ripple beneath thought. Michael spotted
him first across the street, half shadow by the tree line,
Eli stood still, as if the moment had been waiting
for them to step outside the morning light bled through
the branches above him, casting long, sharp lines across the pavement.
Danny followed Michael's gaze and froze. She didn't need to ask,
she knew it was him. Eli stepped forward, slowly, no
threat in his posture. The recorder in his jacket began
to hum, faint but steady, sinking with the pressure behind
Danny's eyes. They met him at the edge of the sidewalk.
You found me, Eli said, as if he had been
waiting for them to connect a final dot. No, Danny murmured,
you found us. There was a ten ship in Michael's stance, sure,
but not suspicion, just caution, thread through disbelief. Eli studied
them both, his voice low, cracked, like something ancient and overused.
You were part of it, even if you didn't know.
But now the voices say you're ready. Danny took a
step closer. Tell me what I forgot, Tell me what
we started, Eli nodded. Eyes never leave in hers, then
follow me. But once we go back, there's no more forgetting.
They sat in Danny's kitchen, blind strawn, the air thick atension, Danny,
Michael's Eli three pieces of a shattered memory, puzzle circling
the truth that had never fully died. Eli looked worse
than the last time she saw him, paler, the marks
on his arms, darker, like the ink had been burned
into him. Michaels broke the silence, tell us everything. Eli
looked up. His eyes were black around the edges, but
there was clarity in them. Now you're gonna think I'm insane.
But the door isn't made of metal. It's made of memory.
He tapped his temple. You tried to isolate human thought
as signal. Right, that was the gold of ritual, Michael said.
Room thirteen wasn't a room. They believed if they could
extract cognition, pure memory, they could cure a trauma, disease,
even death echoes a person's thoughts forever. But something hurt
you Michael's murmur. They we didn't create the signal. They
found one already there, already speaking. We thought it was
a ghost, but it wasn't. It was a reflexion of
everything we tried to erase, pain, rage, grief, And when
they recorded it, it grew and it answered. The entity answered,
Danny sat in a daze.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: It fed off memory became more than what we gave it.
It needed space, a host, a way out. They called
me subject one four seven one. But it never gave
itself a name. It doesn't need one. It's ancient. It
doesn't exist in time, only through recollection. It was dormant
until you tuned into it, and when you tried to
erase it, it embedded itself into you, Danny, and into me.
But Eli, why you? Why us? I heard it first,
I understood it. I was the only one who didn't
reject it outright. So they kept bringing me back, kept
putting me under. He touched the recorder. It whined softly.
But I'm not alone. The other the patients who didn't survive,
pieces of them stayed stuck in the signal. They are
the voices that guided me. They want peace. They wanted
to end, but the entity it wants out and ruined
thirteen is open again. They drove back to Ridgell' psychiatric
hospital that night. The road twisted droue thick fog. The
air was heavier here, the sky darker, not from nightfall,
but from absence. The town around the hospital looked faded,
like a photo left too long in the sun. They
passed the broken gates and stopped in front of the ruins.
The western wings still stood, untouched by flame or time.
Wading inside, the sound returned static, and beneath it something else,
A voice, Danny's fragmented glitched. This is any FIGA twelve
and three thirteen of us here had its? The intercom
beside it sparked ones, then buzz to life.
Speaker 2: Danny lucas subject.
Speaker 1: In imminent.
Speaker 2: You cannot contain what you try to.
Speaker 1: Get Anna's voice, then silence. I think we can still
seal it, Danny said quietly. Her voice shook, not from
fear but certainty. But one of us has to stay inside.
The signal needs a conscious anchor, something it can echo through,
something it can burn into. Michael stayed at the door.
The ear around it vibrated like the inside of a
speaker turned too loud. What happens if we don't, if
it gets out? Danny looked at him, eyes hollow with truth.
Do you really want to find out? She turned back
towards the door, her fingers twitch in as a static
deepened behind that door. Is every unspoken scream, every forgotten experiment.
We put patience children through things no one should have endured,
and we didn't just record their pain. We fed it,
We gave its shape, and now it once out. She exhaled, slowly.
If it gets loose, Ridgewell is the beginning. The hallway
darkened the closer they got, not because the lights dimmed,
but because something pulled the light inward, like sound swallowed
in silence. When they reached the final stretch before the door,
the air changed heavy, saturated personal. It started with Danny.
She stumbled forward, gripping the wall of balance as a
wave of nausea hit. Then the hallway changed white tile,
harsh lights, a gurney, except this time she was on
a table, hands pinned, eyes wide. A scalpel hovered over
her face. But she couldn't scream, couldn't move. People surrounded
her in white coats, whispering her voice among them.
Speaker 4: Let's isolate the moon and see what happens to the fairs,
And let's isolate the see what happens tond she can
still has God under signal his spinal tap monitory.
Speaker 1: Danny thrash, begging herself to wake up. But it wasn't
a dream. It was the entity showing her what she'd done,
what it had become Michael's gasp dropped to one knee,
clutching his chest. The hallway around him flickered, no longer walls,
but flames. He was standing in his living room, and
it was there. She was screaming his name, but he
couldn't move fast enough, couldn't stop the fire from racing
down the hallway towards her room. Then suddenly she was
in the hospital, bed mouth, open eyes, empty, her voice
playing what a machine on loop would sound.
Speaker 2: Like, Lucas, don't forget me, don't forget Ridgewell, Lucas, don't
forget me, don't forget Ridgewell.
Speaker 1: He reached for her, but her body dissolved into static.
This is what forgetten feels like. The voice whispered, you
did this, You let her stay. Eli felt it before
he saw it, a weight pressing down on his chest,
like hundreds of small, reaching hands. The corridor was gone.
Now he stood in the old children's ward. The walls
were peeling, but the voices were sharp. Laughter turned into cries,
crying into chanting, chanting into static. A dozen children surrounded him,
blank eyes, open mouths. Let us go, you promised you.
With an anchor, you held the door open. He fell
to his knees, clutching his skull. I didn't know, he muttered,
I didn't know what they were doing to you. They
began to scream in harmony. You're part of the signal,
now we all are. The vision shattered at once, like
film reels burning through. Danny gasped, staggered back against the wall, shaken.
Michael's collapsed to one knee, drenched in sweat, staring into nothing,
and Eli stood motionless, his eyes wide and wet, jaw
clanked so tightly it looked locked. The door to Room
thirteen was in front of them now, hummin' wadin. The
door stood open, now not wide, but enough enough to
feel its breathing. They had seen what was weighing behind it,
and they knew what it wanted. Danny stepped forward, slow
and steady, like her body already understood what her mind
was only beginning to accept. It needs a mind to
echo through, she said, one strong enough to carry it,
to bind it. Michaels grabbed her arm. Danny, you don't
have to, she smiled, tired and cleared eyed. I do,
she looked at Eli. I took your childhood, I won't
take your future. Two. He tried to speak, but the
pain behind his eyes swelled, tears streaming down silently. You
were a child when we gave it life. You shouldn't
have been the one to bear it. She turned to
Michaels and the silence between them was thick with Anna's memory.
I found her voice, and she forgave me. I think
she wanted you to forgive me to. Michael stepped forward,
jaws clenched, hands into fists. She's waiting, he said, whatever's
behind that door, she's part of it.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: If you're going in, don't go alone. Danny smiled, not
with joy, but what a kind of tired grace. As
Danny stepped through, the hum began to howl, a wind
of pure memory poured around her, anger, grief, terror. She
stumbled but didn't fall. Inside the chamber, the entity waited
with what Danny perceived as a smile, not welcoming, but
one full with hunger. It wasn't a shape or voice,
but a weight of presence. The screams of the loss
greeted her children, patience, fragments of what used to be minds.
She reached for them, held them and took them in,
and as she did they quieted. Anna's voice whispered once,
just once, you didn't Danny, thank you. Then she was gone.
Michaels dropped to his knees outside the door and smiled
through his tears. Eli stood alone, the recorder still warm
in his hands. He could feel the silence on the
other side of the door, could feel Danny there, not gone,
but holding it back. Then the recorder clicked on. A voice, low, distorted,
older than language, whispered from the speaker.
Speaker 3: She is brave, she is crawn, but she is not enough.
Speaker 4: Anchors rushed, dress, sols, cracked echoes, always find a new mouth.
Speaker 3: We remember, and we will wait.
Speaker 1: The ritual psychiatric ruins were sealed off for good. The
official listed it as a condemned site scheduled for demolition,
but no one came to knock it down. Locals said
that the cruise never showed. Some said the machines broke
down as soon as they crossed the property line. Others
whispered that no one remembered ever requesting the demo at all.
Eli moved to the next town over. He worked at
a bookstore, where he smiled at customers and even sometimes
he would laugh, even when no one was there. The
mark on his risk had faded, but never disappeared. He
still had the recorder, which he never played, but once
in a while it clicked on by itself, and Danny's
voice would say, You're safe, keep going, Officer Michaels left
the force. The night Danny sealed the door, he heard
Anna's voice one last time, soft, gentle and free. He
kept her letter in his nightstand. Next to it that
tape labeled for you. As for the town of Ridgwell,
it stayed quiet. But for Michaels and Eli, they knew
the signal would not stay quiet, not for long. It
hums under broken street lamps. It crackles from all TVs
left on static. It echoes in dreams you forgot when
you wake, and sometimes when the wind is just right,
you can still hear it, a voice behind the static.
This is Danny Vega contamination. Holden, but not forever.