Speaker 1: I kicked the rotten porch door open, and a cassette
recorder on the splinter table was already running. The red
twe light blinked over his 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 but 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'm twenty seven,
lean with a den and jacket. I have won since
summers at this camp. I keep a crack wristwatch on
my left wrist. My clothes smell of damp, sitter and
lake mist. I do not introduce myself. I act I'd
come to cabin seven because adair from Josh sounded like
the kind of thing I could laugh off nowvitate made
that dare and to a demand pause it. I said
to Josh. My voice came out tight. It was the
first choice, leave it running and listen, or stop it
in resclosing evidence. Fear tighten my jaw, doubt slooden behind
that fear. Did I want proofor? Did I want to run?
Josh slapped the table and grinned, we keep it, we
take it back. Proofs worth more than your conscience. The
recorder hummed on the table. I reached out and pressed
stop it. His snapped into hollow silence. The room felt small,
as if I had shut something inside a box. I
found the laminated camp roule 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 some one had thumbtacked it there, so the nail bent.
The CODs smelled of smoke in years. I thummed it
connor with my thumb in the paper, scrapeful like oleskin. Maius.
This was lot for a reason, I said, May, counselor May.
Josh noorted, May's running the craft tables. She doesn't even
check the docks. At dawn, I picked up the radio
on the shelf and clicked it to the camp frequency.
Speak a crackle. For a moment, I heard nothing but
shallow static. Then counselor my vos came through exact syllables
too close to what the tape had said. Don't go
to seven, don't. I froze with my hand in the dial.
The voice on the radio repeated a phrase from the
tape and then dropped into static. Fierce shopened into alarm.
I tried sleeping through the notion that the recorder was
a prank. My hands refused that soft comfort. Nay, may
this is cabin savon. He left it out. You would
The radio repeated a warped echo. Josh pressed his forehead
to the screen of the sliding door and pointed lights
at the tree line. I walked to the window. The
dart between the pines are two pale pinpricks that moved
like someone with a flashlight. The pinpricks drifted, then vanished.
The recorder on the table taped once the problem went
from abstruse to immediate danger. Someone or something was using
familiar voices to move us. I unlatched a cupboard under
the sink because the list in the wall had to
be matched with evidence. Inside, I found missing camperfliers. They
were pinned in a neat row. Photos lined the cork,
smiling faces, age ranges head that caught the flush roum
one photo had been scrubbed with a razor. Where if
it should be. There was white paper in rath edge
scrap under the film of dust. It dampsed me. A
glinted along the photo labeled Ruth. A halline crack in
the foto's lamination matched the pattern on my thumena I
had pressed a roule card. I put the scrap to
my nose and smelled the same glue as the tape.
The scream on the recorder matched Ruth's photo in tie
me and tone. That changed the tape from a prank
into a warning. Ruth went missing two summers ago. I
told Josh they mocked 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 learns
someone else? The exchanged tightened like a rope. In the end,
Josh of the tip into his jacket. He proof we
duntee leave 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 laminade a cart.
The recorder at the tape folded in Josh's pocket. Suspicion
pushed at me. Thus suspicion turned into a second shift
of a motion. When the cabin door bang shut. The
door slammed as if a gust had hit it. I
turned fast. The lock had not been turned. My breath hitched.
Voices started on the other side of the wood. Female voice,
the kedons of Councilor make hawling into the night, Ye
kids come back. The voice was wrong and timing it
mushed friezes 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 age 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. Panic moved through me.
Nick made my fingers clamp on the window frame until
the wood ground. I grabbed a cupboard handle and wrenched
it open again. In the back, under a jar of nails,
another recorderly smaller older. The label taped to it with
a date that read tomorrow's date in the hand I
recognized for its quick slash my own name. My mouth
went dry. I read the handwriting outloud because I needed
sound that match sens it says my name tomorrow. I
felt a new emotion, then tread, turning to a cold,
methodical urgency. I had to act. That was a change
from doubt to a 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 outs side,
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 scream in exact cadence. I ran to the porch.
The marsh was churned and dark. My footprints overlapped Josh's
in places and then stopped where it did. There was
no sign of him beyond the reed line. My watch
read one hundred seven. The sky was low and pale
with Kyle. I called his name, no answer. I took
the older recorder from my jacket pocket and tried to
rewind it. The tips stuck like a muff, caught between words.
The label with my name had a smear across part
of the letters, like some one had tried to erase
the word and failed. I tried the radio again. Mass
voice came back clear in my name, and then static
dawn t ticket leave it. Nay, this is cabin seven.
Josh is missing. He shouldn't he, half the speaker said,
and then a full sentence that matched to tape played.
He vanishes at one point seven. You leave a recorder
on the dock had dawn. My hands tightened and the radio.
I felt the room tilt between two choices followed instruction
and survive of fight the loop and resclusing more. That
was the second major emotional shift, control seeking to resign calculation.
I chose action. I ran toward the dock because the
tape voise had given a directive, and because decisions paralyzed
less than in 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 dinner
to warm them. The dock creaped under my weight. Missat
on the water like a lo sheet, the lake reflecting
a pale smear of the moon. I left a tip
on the dark. I did not write a neat note.
I pushed a scrap of paper under the recorder with
the Howard's CROWL take this tell some one. Then I
walked away. The motion felt wrong. It felt like obeying
the voice that had sent Josh away. My legs move
because people move, adorned 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 the
marsh with the flashlight until arms ached. I called me
and left a message, because her number was to one
that had been used. I said, may Josh is gone.
He was last at seven. The answering machine swallowed the
words and returned the 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 angled to the marsh, as if it had
been placed to listen. The laminated rule card had been
not to the floor. My watch faces wet around the glass.
I found on the bulletin board a stack of flies
I had not seen before. They were copies of the
taped notes, typed and photocopied someone its gold lined in
the margins, do not bring it home, do not play alone,
leave a dock. I read one line and hitched a
laugh that had no humor. The margin handwriting matched the
slant of my own writing that was settled in the tape.
Did more than recrud It issued instructions. It used known
voices to get people to obay Tho's instructions, and the
instructions directed movement toward the darke 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 cab
in checking the rooms. Each time I found an ordinary
object disturbed, an empty coffee cup 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,
a thump, and in the recorder's casing. These were not metaphors.
They were evidence that someone had passed through the cabin
in a pattern that matched the tapest tracks. I called
May again, with my hand shaking. I spoke 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 world, scrubbed photo of Ruth,
the second recorder with my name, Josh's disappearance, the footprints
that 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 tear into work.
I could do may short clip questions. Her interrogation felt
like a robe I could hold. When did you press stop?
She asked? When I first heard the scream? Did Josh
toss the small recorder? Yes, he put it in his jacket.
Ton t go back out, Tonight, stay where you are,
lock the door, I will call base. Her voice snapped
off the coal, ended with a promise that felt paper thin.
I switched a radio back on and found static. The
larger recorder on the soul stouted up again without my touch.
It played two words, clear's 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 or stay,
call or silence. Each choice altered the shape of the
next As 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 nails
pressed in. I found a note tucked in the dunim
of my jacket, where my elbow rested. It read one
sentence in a hand I did not know and did
not fully trust. You leave a recorder on the docket, dawn,
you do not follow. I tossed the note on the table.
I could feel the shift inside me from fear to
a brief, brutal clak. I would not follow the command
of following meant losing more. I would not become another
name on the board. That was the third emotional turn,
fearing to a raizorr need to choose differently. I worked
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 as now, I
tried to stop it. I left a note I can
tease say more, do not play it alone. The tape
took my words and swallowed them in a hiss. I
closed the flap and left the recorder in the planks,
And this time I did not push a scrap under it.
I pressed my thumb to the recorder until the plastic
left to mark. I walked away fast. My feet slapped
the boars the dock grown the lake did not respond
back at the trail. Josh as cigarette, but was still
in the dirt where he had dropped it. The marsh
had swallowed his footprints. I sat on a stump and
breathed air that tasted like iron and tape glue. I
tried to imagine an explanation that fit all the details.
A prank, a cruel experiment, a tetered echo of a
missing girl's panic. Each theory failed to fit at least
one observable fact. May arrive mid morning with two councilors
and a sure's deputy. She brought a box of a
fish of forms and a cruelty in her jaw that
said she had seen worse. She from my statement and
wrote down everything I said. She looked at the small
recorder and the smear on the photo and circle dates.
When she said we filed for Ruth's 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 any one else? Eh no, I said, Did
you touch the recorders? Yes? I turned one off, and
then the other was in my jacket. May did not
left her eyes from the form. Then we will lock that.
We will call the camp director, we will take 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 and possible event to
an official record. Her 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 war Then 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
sil go across the bag. A comfort rose when the
recorder entered official custody. The comfort felt tactile and small.
At midday, the deputy came back with the migrocossett and
said nothing. At first, he handed it to me. She
held it and turned the label toward the light. It
had my name and to morrow's date. Her face emptied,
she we cannot play as if its evidence. We love
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 shiel was another small
action that moved the problem into people who made rules
for danger. I felt relief in a different hunger to
know how the recorder predicted or shaped events. The deputy
left with the last evidence bag. Mo took me aside
and said, you will not go near the doctor night.
You will stay in my cabin. I'll assign a councilor
to watch you. I did not want to sleep in
a room for with other people. I wanted to be
alone and worked a problem. But the councilor I assigned,
a woman named Leelah had a steady voice and a
flashlight to 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 tapes 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 Lelah
because my hands needed to touch the place where a
tip had been left. We found prince in the mud
that were unfamiliar and headed away from the dock, not
toward the water. They led to the tree line and
then stopped. Leelah crutched and pressed a glove finger to
the soil. No return prints. It match 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 sealed the area. We
call for more help. At night, they moved the remaining
campers into the lodge. Maya sign 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
in case memory became counterfeit. Before I finally laid 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 his place lay a new
slip of paper, folded. Once I picked it up and
unfolded it with fingers that trembled on it, A single
line in my handwriting My slanted quick script read if
you play it, 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 his book. I
had left a message. I had left a warning. I
had failed to save Josh. I had sailed the recorder
in evidence. I had given the sheriff the bag and
Mayer report and Lelah flashlight. The fear that began the
night settled into an exhausted, brittle resignation that guide of
my steps I had moved through doubt, an urgency in
a moment of action. The chapter closed at me in
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 balls
creaked once under my weight. I walked into the gray morning,
and the recorder's static remain sealed behind plastic and paper.
It's red light and visible 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 play button with my
thumb and had my own voice screen before I had
time to think. Suspicion tightened my hands around the recorder.
As the hiss of tape filled the cabin. The scream
named a time and said plainly, cabin's eaven. I have
kicked the rotten porch door open moments before and seen
the recorder already running on the splendid table. Now the
tape a moment that had not yet happened, and used
my voice to do it. The suspicion that something in
this place was watching choice pushed me toward the recorder
and I lean close. Had despite every warning in my chest,
I pulled the recorder toward me and set my elbow
on the warp wood. I checked the device with the
impatience of some one who still believed machines were simple
yellow plastic Two spose turning a faint red light that
wavered with a hiss. The voice and the tape broke
into wards between static It's at midnight, cabin Salven dawn
t The tape clipped, then the scream came again, exact
and raw, as if some one in the room were
choking on breath. I flinched and knocked money on Ally's foreboard.
My name belonged to the recorder. My hands remembered the
scar at my ebor when I wiped it sweat. I
said aloud, because silence made the cabbing feel like a
measure trap. Who recorded this? There was no answer in
the room. The recorder kept whispering names as a flitting inventory.
The first external crew arrived two footsteps later. A heavy
beat printed wet mud on the porch, half on the
threshold and half gone into the dark. I crouched and
pressed my pum into the depression to chet moisture. It
was fresh and soft under my fingers. I stood and
walked back to the table. The tape shifted, and a
second voiceaid slow through static, Derrick, Maggie. The tape anounced
times alongside names. The times match missing camper reports I'd
seen pinned to the ranger post in town. My throat tightened,
Fair moved under suspicion. I could not ignore the way
the recorder cataloged people like dates on 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.
Derrek 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 lamp sat on the chair back, the strap
down from where I had just slung it on. I
picked it up, clicked it, and a narrow cune of
light cut across the cracked ceiling and landed on the
mess of handriton note stopped under the recorder. I tipped
the notes in, blurred where moisture had hit the paper.
The list matched the tape, names and times scrolled in
the same hand, the same irregulous land Beneath Deryk'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.
He answering the door or what Derrek's voice was flat,
the edge of annoying, sharpened by nerves. He kept his
jackets up to his chin and his breath came in
short clouds that fobbed the porch light. I didn't say, Eda,
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
hissed beneath us. My hands found the record has gone,
as as if holding it my anchor. Reality, Derek, this
place is messed up. We never should be dared each other.
You did me derk. You drive people here for stupid
points and beer. You were the one who said we'd
make it a story, A puzz filled with the tapeesk
soft noise. Derek's jowl tightened. I said I'd go back
and get Maggie. That's all. I only came to check
on her. Mighty, I started, Yes, Mammy, she took my
flaclight earlier. I was going to Derek stopped and looked
at the recorder. Hey, you sure that thing isn't he
messing with us? He wrapped his fingers around the recorders
past it. His hand shook, his voice dropped a half step.
I heard it pick up an old gill. You and
me both know I shouldn't he have dared. 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 cracks green. I answered with the phone press
to my year, because talking in front of Derek felt
like we were both part of whatever we'd awakened. Hank,
I said. Ranger Hanks's voice came through thin and heard
we found another recorder on the dock, empty head shell
but running. Someone left near the rotted plank by the ladder.
He paused, and then added. The last voice on that
tip is yours. It says, I swear to God help me.
It's happening now. The time stamped and the note was
thirty five minutes from now. Who's at Cabin seven? I
told him I was inside. I told him Derek was there.
My mouth felt dry. Hank's voice stay clipped. Duntee, move Stapa,
I'll bring a couple of searches. Keep that recorder on.
If it names someone, write it down. Dun'tee hand it
to anyone else. I looked at Derek. He hank cold.
That's bad. He sounded like he saw the dock. He
my voices on the tape, I said. Dirk's eyes widen.
He dropped his hand to the table. Then we shouldn't
be alone with it. He looked at the doorway, and
then at me. We should get out now. I started
to akoree, and then the tape accelerted on its own.
The spool spun faster. The room filled with small suns,
exactly as they were happening. The chair creak when Derek stood,
the scrape of shoes on ward, 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 that
had made when the recorder sped up. Then the tape
played a scream not recorded earlier, but time to rupt
in the next second, a screamed that the tape had
already produced and the room was about to produce. Simultaneously,
Derec'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 to tail
of the static. We both froze as something moved across
the threshold. It wasn't a shadow. I saw a low,
slow shift, like the curtain of a damp blae and
keep being hold aside the center of the door. We
filled with the presence that made the hairs along my
forearm's lift. I had no time to name the feeling
beyond move. I pushed past Derec and shoved the door wide.
We ran. The fog swallowed our boots, and the ball
creaked under us like a warning. Derec stumbled on a
loose plank, dropped in a grab 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 gate nothing back. I crashed through the saplings
toward the dock, because the lake was the only flat
line I could imagine following. My hands found the railing
sick with dew. The recorder was not in my hands.
The red light pulsed 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 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 Outward.
Ranger Hanks eyl A Coal came over my phone again,
this time with him out of breath. We found a
recorder touched between the planks and the last voices you say,
and I can tee Denis 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
Day in the dark, dantee go after him. We'll get
a team here. Nobody touch 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 clover. Check the recorder, Check the label, check for
any marks. I picked up the recorder's case. A new
sticky label clung to it where none had been before on.
The label was time stamped and heard black ink. The
time read three hours from now. I slid my thumb
over the ink, as if I could smudge it away.
The label was dry. I felt a wave go 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 cut logging futures. If a
cataloged futures, then those times might be schedules. I've forced
myself to name the options out loud. We either stop this,
or we run and hide, we get help, or we
try to find Eric. The sentence sounded like bargaining with
a machine. Ranger Hanks team arrived with lights bobbing like
loo satellites. They called our names. Derek's jacket was found
snagged on a low branch, torn on the hem. The
searchers looked around the forest floor and found footmarks that
led away from the cabin and then disappeared near the
water line. Hank took the recorder from me without gloves
and set it in the dock. He didn't tea play
it right away. We need evidence, he said, We need
to know what's recorded. One of the searchers, Rose Sir Nell,
and pointed at the damp paper I had pulled from
under the recorder. These are antea notes for pranks. She said,
this is dates and times, This is planning. Rose's voice
had a blund utilitarian calm. Her hands worked without hesitation. Derek,
she asked, he fell into the brush and didn't it
come back up? I said, I called for him, he vanished.
Rosa met my eyes. Did you see anyone? She asked, No.
I said the word, and then told them about the tape,
screaming my name. Hank's face did tea change. He was
a man who had dealt with missing compass 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 grod the tree line. Rosa stayed in the
dock with me. Two others took a boat to circle
the knee shore. We were a small cage of human
sound in a lake of fog and potential. The tit's
prediction hung over us like an instruction. We wrote names
on scrap paper. I added Maggie and derec in a
handful of other campers whose names the tape had spat
out earlier. We wrote towns beside each name, and folded
the papers so the ink wouldn't The smear in the
Dambeya night stretched. The search is called bach. Minimal reports
em to footprints, a torn sleeve, 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 use of our choices. I started to think of
the tape as an operating manual threats. It colored our movement.
Suspicions laid into dread, and then into a brittle insistence
to act. I could not sit and watch a schedule unfold.
At two in the morning, Rose Her 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. She why do you come back? A
question was more simple, and it landed like a stone
because I thought answer has 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 pride. Rosaline back. You and Deryck, you both have
that same stupid streak. Hee me. Once he started all
the dares, he blamed you for not stopping. He didn't
he blame me. Then, I said, he blamed himself. My
mouth tasted like oldton. Memory of that night when we
had first burst into cabins Evemouth, flashlights and beers rose
with precise, concrete images. The way Derek lit a cigarette
in the porch, the sound of Maggie laughing too aloud
in the bunk room, the smell of spilt cola on
the counter. Those moments were real and anchored. The recorder
had turned them into clues on a timeline. We argued
quietly about choices. 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, Dante, be the ones
who go to the predicted places. High don Te followed
the tape. She bit off the words like someone chopping
a rope. But if someone's out there, if some one
is it, then we trapped the user. We set bait.
Her plan was quick and sharp. Leave a dummy recorder
in 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 organize 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
side don't Tea go to the water. The voice wasn't
he mine. It was a tea dear x, Rosa swore.
Hank cursed softly. The tape then played the sound of
heavy boots and a wet slap on wood. The board
and the dock groaned underweight. Some on of something warped
a long far side of the pier, and the noise
moved away. We sprang to our feet and trained lights
on the tree line. Figures slid between trunks like animals.
The radio crackled with Hank's orders. We moved as a unit,
feet bearding a path through maud. We found prints in
the soft death that circled away from the dock and
stopped at the old boath house. 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
and a single bootprint that led to a ladder. Neither
Derreck nor Maggie was there. On the ladder rung, some
one had left a scrap of paper a name in
a time. The name was Derrick. The I matched the
time stamp we'd seen earlier on the label. Now blew
to the recorder of the dock. The choice tiped like
a thrown stone. The paper's handwriting matched the list from
the cabin. The person who had catalog names had also
left instructions. Some one had been creating a time table
that some one had moved the events outward from the
cabin to the dock to the boath house. The way
the evidence read it together changed how I understood the
cabin's first tape. It was not just predicting, it was
broadcasting events outward, making them real the long a trail,
we argued in quick lines, he's alive somewhere of Rosa.
We either fine Dike or we stopped the recorders from
making more labels. Hank, we can't keep reacting. What if
it's not a person, some one asked from the edge
of the boat house. Then we treat it like a
pattern and break the pattern, Hank answered. He set his
jaw and again 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 a speed that felt impatient.
I picked it up. The new label was there a
time scrolled two ears away. The tape inside was warm
under my palm. I felt a tiredness that wasn't asleep.
It was one of those dissolving edges where hope thin
into something like acceptance. I left to the microphern on
my phone and spoken to with clip words, recording a
brief warning to leave the place alone and a clear
note of who had stayed behind. I left the recorder
on the dock and stepped back fast enough that my
shoes slipped on wet banks. I watched the red light blink.
I watched Hank taped to label into his note book.
The searchers shared a distant findings into radios. The event
had worn down, but not ended. The schedule on the
labor sat there like a clock waiting to be started.
Dawn arrived as a gray wedge, the fog thin and
horizontal strips, and the lake showed its flat dark. I
walked away from the dock with the thermis 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 with me felt like carrying the
instrument that set the times. The light over the doc
turned 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 lights still pulsed,
but the new label, the one with the future time,
had a second, smaller line written under it, a name
I did not recognize, and a time a few minutes
after the one stamped 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 made because action was necessary. I drove away,
with Rosa beside me, hand wrapped around her thermos. I
was fixed on the road. I said, we left the
recorder on the dock, We left notes, we hang everything.
I kept my voice even worse, 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 phone boss. 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.
My thumb hovered over the keyboard. I did not respond.
The chapter it ends with me standing at the edge
of the dock again at dawn, watching the red light
blink and slipping my phone 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
on the planks, felt its one plaster c under my hand,
and then stepped a wed and walked until the dock
was small behind me. The cassette in the dock was
already running. When morrishov the board aside and shirted my name.
Suspicion tightened my hands around the recorder before I even
reached for the player, hissed. I always spoke three names
in a time At Concrete Sun. Derrick morra Me made
the conflict immediate. We had a running tit that knew 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
whichever had left it. I had been the one to
kick open Cabin seven's rotten porch earlier that night. I
had found a recorder on a splinter table inside, already playing.
That is the fact I held like a whickcloth against
my throat. The recorder on the dock was the same model,
the same yellowed plastic, the same faint's mirror, where a
handwritten label had been torn away. I was twenty seven,
had worked summers as a counselor, and I knew how
camp ranks ran. But the recorder said my name. Saying
my name changed a problem from prank to threat. Turn
it off, Derek. He came up the path, breathing fast,
handshoved into his jacket pockets. He might name when he
reached me, Alex Dante. His voice cut across the hislick
a line through a map. It nimed you too, Mara answered,
without looking at Derek. She crouched at the recorder, fingers
hovering over the plastic play button. Mara's jawl was set
the weight gets when she decides not to be scared.
Derek's shoulders were hunch Awhere he does when he blames
first and thinks later. Those are the small repeatable facts
I rely on when I try to explain what followed.
I thumb the tape's edge and heard a second bull click.
The voice shifted. It didn't tease speaking sentences. First, it
ran through a list of pictures, a porch step, a
half melted candle, a boot prin near the water. Then
the voice said, derreck midnight, marraw shoreline, Alex done tee,
turn your back. The recorders built in mad light blinked
once Derek grabbed the recorder from me. Hudahll left this.
He asked. His voice was short. His anger was a
tool he used to push away fair. He scanned the
shoreline with his flashlight beam, dotting over the lapping black
water and the slick planks of the dock. We didn't
leave it here, ma, We came straight from the path.
We only dared each other to knock on cap in seven.
Her breath showed in the flashlight's beam. He kicked the
door in a lex. He wanted proof. I said nothing.
My palm had gone damp where I'd held the recorder.
I remembered the porch door I had kicked open. The
splinters that sprayed my knuckles, the recorder on the table
already playing about Utrique. That memory was a physical thing,
the wooden grain under my finger nails, the taste of
lake wrought in my mouth. I did not invent it now,
it had already happened. So as a set up direct
somebody's messing with us, some kid playing a prank, right,
Mara looked at him, and then at me. If it's
a prank, it's too precise. Whoever did this new our names?
They know the dare. They knew you'd kicked the porch Alex,
they knew a sentence stopped when the tape clicked into
a first bull 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 pascent,
the same hitch at the end, when I lose breath,
it rose and cut off a single syllable. I shoved
pass 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 voice. 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 became the
engine for everything I did. Next, we reached the cabin
without talking. Derec glimpsed lightly from an old nee brewise.
Mark kept glancing back at the dock. I kept the
record a low listening. The porch light over cabin seven was.
The hinges still moaned when I pushed the broken door
the rest of the way open. Inside the living room,
dampwoard smelled sharp and clean. The notebook lay in the
creek by the stove, as pages, water slick at the corners.
I had found this same notebook curlier and thumb through it,
without understanding that earlier reading was a concrete action. I
saw dates written in the same scroll, names listed under
the like inventory. Tonight the notebook was open to a
new page, freshened blood into the fibers. Watch this morror,
she pointed with the beam of her head lump. 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, Morrarid Aloud Slow,
June fourteenth June seventeenth July second. They end with times.
These are when people didn't he come back. The radio
in the corner crackled. Ranger Harlow's voice came through, course
and flat. Do not stay at the sight, he said,
Static tunneled his words and stole syllables. Get to the road.
The line cut clean. Derek's land is fist again, hence
the crate. That's it. We leave now. Mara's eyes flicked
to the window. We can leave, Deryck not like this.
Her hand went to the back of the notebook, as
if to shield it. They argued in short bursts, three
lines a time, hash and fast. Derek ye heard hollow.
We need to go. Marrow the name like a defense.
We can tea, just take our stuff and run. Derek's
shot back. Someone's been here, someone's been writing names. Who's
to say they want to follow us? Then call Halla,
Mara call him and wait, phones dead, no service. Are
you sure, Marrow at yes, I'm sure. The argument pushed
the moment forward. It was not introspection, perforced 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, and the recorder
my roll shifted from reluctant lead it to someone who
might be useful. We moved through the cabin with 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 h hiss of voice
that might name a place or a step. Every three
or four pair of graphs of our movement, something external happened,
a flashlight being found, a footprint, the power went out,
a cassette click, A creak 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. Marris stepped onto the porch to
find matches. The porch board side under her weight. She
froze and whispered for Prince 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, countdown,
nine minutes. A mechanical wine underlaid the voice. Derek swore,
we need to smash it, Derek. He grabbed the recorder
and brought his palm down over the top. The plastic
cracked against a heel of his hand. Stop my voice
was a 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 casette inside,
spun loose and skittered across the floor. The sound stopped
for a single long breath. The cabin held silence. In
A box at the back of the closet slid forward,
triggered by the shifted weight in the room. The box
stumped against the wall and skit it open. There were
more players, a craid of them, each rigged start. When
the first filled one flipped on in, a fresh tape
threaded itself through the player. The new label had three
initial scold across it. Derek swallowed who the hell. Mara'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 campside with a
rough marked and chockoal to the shore line. And one
looped arror pointing to the dock. Someone had circled cabin
seven and written in the same hurried hand, bring them
close the loop. A fight burst between Derek and Marr.
Then it would rapid fire. Six short exchanges will blame
ricocheted back and forth. You it was a darer Derek's bat.
Ye want to prove? Mar answered, Alex opened the porch.
Derek jabbed 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. Dango was a lever that shifted our options.
Derek insisted on leaving. Mar insisted we needed to see
the shore line. I could have sided with thee that
I made the path reel. I chose neither. I chose
to walk the map instead. We moved toward the waterhead,
with the recorder in my jacket, the map folded in
my palm. The night pressed against our backs. The shore
smelt of algi and old rope. The tide pushed at
the dark and 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 raggeder 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, a nervous noise. This
is getting staged, some kid, some set up. We trapped them.
We call Harlow. In the morning, Marrow stepped closer to
the water and found impressions in the mud bootrayds. Thus
started at the dock and stopped at a shallow groove
in the reeds. She crouched and traced one with her
glove finger. They stopped here, she said. Then nothing as
shape hived up from the water's edge, like something pushing free.
It moved too smoothly for a person, at first, a
slow and degrading slide. Derek grabbed at it, and his
hand closed on with 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 and Derek's arm went slack. He was
being pulled toward the water. The force came from his ankle,
tugging hemment with a pressure that felt like a rope
tightening a round bone. He kicked and cursed. Marra lunched Derec.
She screamed and grabbed the back of his jacket. I
grabbed her other sleeve. Let go. Derek's snowed, then his
voice broke. Let's pull his arm. I grabbed Derek's forearm,
where the sleeve had torn with a fabric clung to
the mud. My fingers slid on Algi. The recorder in
my jacket thudded against my rops. 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 us act together. One more or two, Derec choked.
On three, I hold with both hands. Derec came forward
a foot, then free. Something cold brushed my shins, and
the mud ripped at my boots. I heard a sound
like a mouth pulling from wet leather, a dragging sound
that left marks in the sand. Derec collapsed on to
the dock and clawed 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 were blue with 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 a clicked and a new voice lay appealed through,
not the recorded voice, but a whisper under the tape,
a delay decho of me singing a line I knew
I'd never said, you can end it, though, whisper said
in my tongue, close the loop? Where could it say?
The warning said? A name finished the tape. Mar stood
up so fash she swayed what derec pushed himself to
his feet. We burned the things, threw them in the fire.
There is no fire left, I said. The shack had
no fuel, no light. I held up the damp map,
the loop arrow, and the map seemed to burn on
its own. The recorder at my chest clicked again. The
small red light blinked. The whisper laid over the hiss
change into a simple instruction, record your voice, save them
by warning, close the loop. A cold, logical panic flooded
through me. If the tape could play future screams, then
perhaps recording my own voice and act designed to stop
the thing 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.
Panic made me run. Obligation. A quieter, heavy estate made
me consider doing the thing. The tape demanded my regret.
The recorder from my jacket without asking. Her fingers were firm.
You want to do it, Alex, she said. It was
little more than statement, but it was a decision. She
set the device in the dark and put the microphone
close to her mouth. If it's a loop, then I'm
not letting it. You see Derek's hands trembled. Morrow, don't
he don't you talk into it? She flipped the small
sweat in the machine word. Her voice came out thin
and steady. This is Morr Haines. If you find this tape,
do not go alone to cabin seven. Do not answericles
that starked with static. Leave the recorder where it lies.
She sped the words as if they were a shield.
The recorder paused. Then a new scatchel ayer of sound
folded into the track. A second later, voice that sounded
like wager, hollow, not enough. It wants closure, derricate the
recorder with the heel of his hand. The player stuttered
and died. For a moment, we all laughed, because the
laugh felt like a claiming the night. Then a light
flared at the far side of the shore, and a
shape pushed out of the trees. It didn't walk, It
stood and stepped with a gathered release that matched the
rhythm of the tape 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 at my eyes those were my hazel irises
reflected in mud. The sight 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
derrec almost drown. I had seen Mara decide to act.
Her choice had pulled him away from the water. The
action had changed 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 dock felt narrower with every step. My chest hurt
where my jacket rubbed the recorder's case. I set the
recorder on the warped board and held the microphone close
to my mouth. This is Alec's character, I said, keeping
my sentences short. If you find this, do not come
to Cabin seven at midnight, do not follow the shoreline.
Leave the tape where you find it, and do not
play it alone. Call the reindeer. My voice shook on
the last two words, but I forced it flat. Each
line I recorded felt like a plaster across so wound.
The creature did not move. Its head tilted as if
hearing something only it could hear. The recorder clicked as
it rewound. My hands were steady enough to fasten the
cap back on the microphone. Then it spoke again in
my voice, thank you, plused the loop, gave them warning.
Direct grabbed my shoulder and pulled me backwards so hard
my feet left the boards. He yanked me and marrow
toward to panth. He hissed, Hollow, get to the road.
We ran without looking back. I kept the recorder under
my jacket like contraband the maps loop burned behind my eyes.
My emotions shifted again. Suspicion had become panic, then obligation,
then a brittle resolve, and finally it numb pushed to survival.
Dom found me coughing in a muddy ditch half a
mile from the campsite. My jacket was placid to my chest.
The recorder was in my pocket, its red light dead.
There was no sign of Dirk. My legs trembled. When
I climbed to the road. A truck was idling at
the turnaround. Ranger Hollow leaned against it with the thermas
in his hand. He looked older than I remembered, hair
gray at the temple, eyes that had the haunted, steady
look of some one who had seen a dozen things
people called supernatural. And then had to clean up the rest.
You are right, Hollow. He didn't wait for an answer.
He opened his door and offered me the 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 to tape one
last time. A voice that was mine said, if you
find this tape, do not go alone to cabin seven
at midnight. Do not answer calls. Thus start with static,
leave the recorder where it lies, call the ranger. Beneath
my voice. A whisper smiled in my cadence. Close the loop.
Keep them safe by warning them. Hollow's jowel worked. He
reached across and put his palm over the recorder on
my lap, as if to make it small. Net. You
did what you could, he said. He did not say
it loud. He did not need to. I wanted to
tell him about Deryck. I wanted to say the name allowed,
so that it would become a fact instead of a rumor.
The thing about names in the Notebookan and the tapes
is that they make a person reel. Saying Derek's name
would make him agreed to the ranger. But I had
no proof where Derek was. I had only to loop
in my chestword of tapes where Spurys sat. Harlow climbed
out of the truck and lock the doors. We searched
the shoreline at first light. He said. We bring dogs,
we follow footprints. We do what we can. He'd to
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 out a
small paper back. Inside was a damn folded map and
a pen. He circled cabin's eaven 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 derreck. He didn't.
He promised to bring Derek back. Harlow 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 hoping the bandage would hold. Harlow
started the truck and we drove toward the town. As
we hit the paved road, 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 I
pompressed the plastic as stop sign. Harlow turned and looked
at me. You're not going to put this out where
any one will find it, are you. His face was practical,
but his eyes held the way to some one who
had swallowed too many odd nights. No, I said, the
word was short. I had a different kind of obligation now,
to keep a warning for becoming a lower. We keep
it with the station, We log it. We don't play
it for prank hnta's He nodded and hunched over the wheel.
The recorder clicked under my fingers like a heart. Two
days later, the search teams found a bootprint trail that
ended a flooded hollow, and then nothing. They found drag
marks in a torn jacket half buried in weeds. They
did not find Derk's body. They found instead another recorder
bird under moss, planks, stapeed and by water. The notebook
from cabins Evan was recovered in pieces. The circled names
remained larg Someone took the notebook and sealed it in
an evidence bag. Ranger's log dates Haller wrote a short report.
At night, I played the recording once more in the
ranger station's evidence room with the lights off. I wanted
to hear my voice in the whisper together to test
whether my words had changed the pattern. The tapist unfolded.
Then my own voice came through cleanly. Do not go
alone to Cabin seven at midnight. Do not answer calls
that starved 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
a warn them. That extra line shifted me in a
way nothing else did. It wasn't he just an instruction
to others? It refrained 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
wary 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 some one had left
another recorder out of spite or out of a kne
to warn. I learned two hard things. First, the tape
can imitate you enough that your voice ends upon a track,
and your voice can mean two things at once, a
warrning 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 grain shot taken at
the edge of the lake, the dock in the distance.
In the photo, three shadowed figures stood on the shore line,
maraw Derrick and another person I could not name. A
small square of light in the dock looked like a
recorder's red lamp. Some one had circled one of the
shadows in pen and ridden a name, not Deryck's, not mine,
a volunteer in the ark of said to person had
never been reported as missing. I keep the recorder in
a podded envelope now Harlowe put it in evidence with
a note teap recovered owner ann do not play without
a naudiotape present. They mounted the envelope on a shelf
and keyed it under a case number. Sometimes, late at night,
I take it from the envelope and put the cap
back on the microphone. I pressed my ear to the
speaker unless and for anything new. Most times there was
only silence in the faint clock of my WRISTWTCH. Once
very faint, there was a line under my voice I
had not noticed before. A deliberate, slightly amused echoed that said,
keep them safe by warning them. That sentence changed how
I looked at what I'd done. It made the choice real.
I had recorded a warning, and in doing so I
had joined a chain. Whether that chain save Dirric, I
cannot say. I have written his name into reports and
into my own note book, and I say it aloud
sometimes so it doest he slip into rumor. Saying his
name is a physical action. I move my lit and
he ate 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 thum
against pale water. I think about the map Sloop, about
the dott A 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 Harlow's practical hands, about Deryck's laugh when he still
believed the weld was a place for jerks. The final
fact of that night is small and concrete. One morning,
a handreton note appeared on the back of the evidence
form at the ranger office. It read, if you find
this tape, keep it secure in one other's, 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. Derreck, call Mara, Haines, Alex Carter. I
wrote the date. I stippled the note to the file.
I did not promise rescue. I made a choice. I
would keep their recorder safe. I would push the evidence forward,
and I would say the names aloud so they could
not be erased by silence. When I left the station
that night, Hollow called me back. He handed me a
small sealed cassette a paper bag. We found this at
the last shore line search. He said it was half buried.
We think someone 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 dome light and saw my own
initials included. Again. I dun't know if any word as
spoke ever changed what the tape wanted. I know only
this I I chose to warn on record a 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 specially like me, saying,
Taunty go alone. The recorder in evidence sits in a
label box ranger's log visitors who request to see the files.
When someone asks, I tell them what I can, Where
we found the devices, which name circled, Who left and
who didn'ty. 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 chair space with
the responsibility that presses my shoulders forward. The tape demanded closure.
I gave it words. That is the action I can hold.
The rest. The missing, the shapes and the reeds, the
voice that borrows my cadence remain in concrete details. Footprints
in the mud, a torn jacket nailed to a search
of photograph with a shadows circled and a name I
haven't been able to place. On certain nights, when the
wind comes inland from the lake in the Pines Creek,
I hear a noise that might be a TAATESI or
might be a truck radio, A thin static chin that
resolves for a second into my own voice, saying, if
you find this tape, keep it safe. I stand up
from wherever I am, and I checked my pockets for
the recorder. The action is habit now. I fold my fingers,
a round plastic that remembers my palm. At dawn. I
still go to the shoreline, sometimes alone, and match bootprint
against the ones in a report. I trace a finger
along the map where the loopins at the dock. I
do not go to the dock after midnight. I do
not answer calls at 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 bag and tells me
they found new evidence at the shoreline. I put the
bag into my jacket and zipper 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 stipple to its 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 bag and walking away with it towards
the station.