The Weird Tapes

I got another one of those weird tapes in the mail today. Same exact thing as last time, too. Taped shut like it was meant to survive Armageddon and tucked under all the other mail.

"Another one, huh?" I said, uncovering the manilla envelope. I turned to my left and right, searching for signs of fowl play, but everything was quiet. There was no one on the sidewalk, and there were no cars on the street. Whoever had dropped the tape in my mailbox was long gone.

I took the tape inside and dropped it on the dining room table with my keys. Before I did anything else, I needed to shower and get a bite to eat. It was a long day at the office. By that, I mean, moving one-hundred pound boxes all day in a sweltering warehouse had really taken its toll. I smelled like a bag of onions and had zero fuel left in the tank.

After a quick shower, I pulled a half-eaten pepperoni pizza from the fridge and put a few slices on a plate. Cold pizza is a gift from the gods when you're living paycheck to paycheck and starving at the end of a long day. It didn't take long for me to devour the first slice, and as I sat chewing the last bite of it, my eyes wandered back to the manilla envelope.

The pizza in my stomach settled like a handful of rocks. Staring at that envelope was akin to looking a hungry predator in the eye, and yet, I knew I'd open the damn thing and watch whatever twisted video was inside. I'm a human being. Curiosity often overrides logic, and I'm as weak to it as anyone. Maybe moreso, after finding that key in my dad's study.

"Okay," I said, blowing air between pursed lips. "Let's do it." I pushed my chair back and stood up to grab a knife from the drain rack. I sat back down and grabbed the envelope, slicing it open with ease. The new tape was weathered and beaten, like its predecessor, but something was different. I turned the tape over in my hands a few times, letting my eyes run over it. Then it hit me.

"The symbol. It's a different symbol!" I jumped up, nearly knocking the kitchen chair beneath me to the floor and dashing to my dad's study. I grabbed the other tape from the top of the VCR and put the two side by side. There was no doubt about it. The new tape was marked with a different symbol, but again, it seemed as though it were carved by the same hand.

With shaking hands, I gently put the tape in the VCR and pushed it in. The VCR took over, pulled the tape in, and started playing it. I scooped up the remote and just plopped down on the floor in front of the TV like a kid on Saturday morning. I didn't want to miss a single frame of the film.

Static overtook the large screen, and there was something there, swimming just beneath the sea of gray dots. It was little more than a vague shape, but I saw it.

Then, it was gone. Replaced by the surprisingly crisp image of a pile of rubble. It was an old house, from the looks of it. One that had been burned to the ground, once upon a time. The remnants of a stone chimney and fireplace still stood tall, but everything else had been reduced to ash or piles of stone. The videographer said, "This is the place, you guys. This is the place I tracked her to. I'm filming every single second of this, too, so you guys can see I'm not crazy. I'm tired of this. I can't live like this, anymore!"

The cameraman stopped, took a deep breath and tried to steel his nerves. I could see the camera shaking in his hands. I'm pretty sure he was shooting this on his cell phone, and, based on the way he talked to the camera, he intended to post it on social media. Probably YouTube, if I haven't missed my guess.

"Okay, Carlos. Chill, man. Chill. If she's in there, she'll hear you out here and kill you before you even get inside. Find the damn doors and get this over with." Carlos started walking again, filming the perimeter of the house as he looked for an entrance.

I assumed that he had to be looking for a basement entrance. There was no house to speak of and there were no other buildings nearby, either. My theory was proven correct when Carlos stopped at a set of two heavy wooden doors laying slanted against the outside of the old foundation.

They looked so rotten, I expected them to crumble in Carlos's fingers, but they somehow held, creaking as he swung them open. Carlos muttered whispered curses at the loud noise, and looked around himself at the woods surrounding him. There was nothing, so he turned back to the darkened basement below him.

The old stone steps were covered with moss, and a dank smell drifted up to his nose. "Oh, man," Carlos groaned. "What the hell is that?"

He stopped and turned on the flash so that his camera could see in the pitch black confines below. There was nothing out of the ordinary at first. Just the old stone steps and walls. Then, the space opened up to Carlos's right, and things went from zero to sixty in a split second. Carlos gagged and coughed, turning his camera toward the ceiling.

Every inch of the ceiling was covered with hanging chains. Hooks with disembodied limbs hung sporadically throughout. They were in varying states of decomposition. I completely understood it when Carlos doubled over and emptied his stomach on the floor.

Carlos waded forward, shoving his way through the chains, and holding his nose against the smell. Soon, he found himself between two rows of shelves. Each side was lined with its own garish array of pickled organs or brains. Many of the specimens in the jars showed signs of snackage. My stomach flopped. I heard Carlos swallow thickly on screen and groan in disgust.

An opening appeared ahead. A place Where the chains dissipated and the shelves opened into another, larger space. There was a large wooden block in the center of that space. It was stained the deep brown of old, dried blood and slathered in the fresher, more vibrantly red variety. Atop the whole mess was a dessicated human torso. Little was left save the ribcage, the arms, and some bits of tissue.

"I…shouldn't be here…" Carlos stammered, turning back. "I really shouldn't be here." He started shoving his way back through the chains and towards the exit, and that's when the wailing started.

It was the cry of a fox who'd smoked a pack a day for twenty years. A harsh, shrieking sound that rent the ear drums. I couldn't tell where it was coming from, and Carlos couldn't either. It seemed he'd also gotten lost in the vast clanging sea of Iron ringlets. But, something had found him, anyway.

Her dark form slunk into view just off to Carlos's right hand side. I could see her rotten gray skin, sunken rheumy eyes, and decaying black teeth as she leered at him.

"Carlos, come on, man! Look!" I shouted at the TV.

As if he'd heard me, Carlos whipped the camera in her direction and unleashed a shrill scream. He began muttering prayers in Spanish. I couldn't understand all of what he said, but his terror came through loud and clear.

The camera was knocked loose and crashed to the floor, leaving most of Carlos and the witch out of frame, but I could hear squelching and crunching, and I could see the blood oozing down Carlos's legs as they swung limply just a few inches above the floor. After a few gut-wrenching moments, the noises stopped and Carlos's body came crashing to the floor in a heap. His neck bent at an odd angle leaving his bloodied and shattered, empty eye socket staring into the camera. The static took over the screen again, and the video was over.

I rose from the floor slowly on legs that ached and felt a bit tingly in the toes. I popped the tape out of the VCR and set it up on top of the other one. "Erik and Brady Rumsberger." I snapped my fingers. It was the only individual thread sticking out of the crazy ball of yarn in front of me.

I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and swiped it open. In the Google search bar I typed, "Erik and Brady Rumsberger 10-27-82," and hit Enter. Paydirt. The very first results to come up were old newspaper articles covering the "strange disappearance" of Erik Rumsberger.

It seems that no one believed Mrs. Rumsberger's story. Not even her husband. He had her and Brady committed and then hung himself in a motel room a few miles outside of town. Stansfield, Idaho, to be exact.

My stomach rumbled, reminding me That I'd only eaten a single slice of pizza since I'd gotten home. I locked my phone and put it back in my pocket. I made a mental note to go back and Google burned down houses in that area. Maybe there was some kind of local connection between the Rumsbergers' tragic fate and Carlos's gruesome end.

As I turned the corner into the kitchen, I stopped dead in my tracks. On top of the pizza box on my kitchen table, lay a large black envelope. On the front of it, etched in thick lines of silver marker, was the symbol from the first tape.

"Someone's in the house!" I grabbed the knife I'd used to open the package from the kitchen table and dashed to the back door. I looked outside and saw no one. No signs of anyone fleeing the scene, either. I turned around and ducked back into the house, stomping loudly. "I know you're in here!" I screamed, storming through the house and brandishing the small knife like a true slasher.

I found absolutely nothing. There was no one in that house but me. I was alone with two mysterious tapes and an ominous, black envelope that had somehow appeared in my kitchen. With shaking hands I picked up the envelope and turned it over. The flap was sealed with wax. The symbol pressed into it resembled the symbol on the front of the envelope. I cracked the seal and peered inside.

At first, I couldn't see anything. Then, I saw the faintest hint of white, peering up at me from the dark recesses of the envelope. I flexed the envelope between my fingers puffing it out, and then turned it upside down over the kitchen table. A small, white card came floating down out of the envelope, landing gently on the table.

The side facing me was blank, but the card seemed to be made of good stock. It felt heavy when I picked it up to flip it over. On the other side it read, "3600 Prospect."

"Finally," I said, sitting down in a kitchen chair and grabbing another slice of pizza from my plate, "a place to start."