u/E_E_Dark0

While rummaging through some boxes during the move, I found the old tapes I had kept. That brought back a memory I had long buried in my mind. When I was a child, my parents, still alive at that time, loved buying tapes to use on those heavy, bulky tube TVs. Ours was an old black and white set, a secondary TV in the house that no one else wanted. It was, by chance, on a sunny afternoon that I decided to watch a new release. I don’t quite remember if it was an action movie, but I think it was.

My sister, Jersey, a young girl with blonde hair and eyes so blue that the sky would seem ordinary next to them, was resting in the next room. Taking advantage of the fact that we were the only two at home, I started searching the shelf, among all the other tapes, for the one I wanted to watch. When I found it...

It wasn’t the one I was looking for, but it caught my attention.

This tape was wrapped in a transparent bag, with only the name: “The Tape.”

I, always very curious about things, opened it. I thought my father had finally gotten the new movie I had been asking for for so long. I sat on the round red carpet in front of the TV, which had a yellowish stain from the last time I spilled juice. I got scolded so much that day that my back still remembers it.

I put the tape in and played it.

What I am about to describe is what my mind tried to push to the back of my head.

The video starts off simply, but what caught my attention was the lack of music. The screen went black, and suddenly, the image of a lawn appeared. It looked more like someone was recording it, like a home video.

The only sound I could hear was heavy breathing.

The person raised the camera.

In the distance, a blue car was on fire.

The closer the camera got, the more I could make out two figures inside the car.

In the front, a man whose face seemed far too blurred. He wore a yellow T-shirt stained with red, with a hole in his forehead and his eyes closed.

The camera moved, zooming in on the man in the back.

He was the worst.

I will not describe him, but know this: he was worse.

The tape ended.

I was still in disbelief, unable to believe what had happened. That was when my mother’s soft voice started calling me from outside.

I, still frozen, didn’t know what to do.

My mother’s voice had a high-pitched, gentle, yet thin tone.

I stood up and walked toward the door. A shiver ran down my spine. Something was wrong, I just didn’t know what.

It was as if the voice was hers, but at the same time, it wasn’t.

I was just a few inches away, about to open it.

That’s when a voice in the back of my mind told me to stay away from the door.

The voice on the other side began screaming, demanding to be let in.

The door started shaking, with loud scratches that almost seemed capable of splitting the wood.

It went on like that for several minutes. I nearly peed my pants.

In my child’s mind, I thought it was the tape.

I put it back in the plastic and returned it to its place.

I went to my room, crawling under the covers, until my parents came home.

When my parents arrived, I told them everything, though they hardly believed me. I went to get the tape to show them, but it was nowhere to be found. Several fine marks, like scratches, remained on the door. They said I must have been up to some mischief and didn’t want to take the blame.

Curiously, years later, my father bought a car identical to the one I had seen in that recording, but being a skeptic in his adolescence, he hardly believed in the supernatural.

A big mistake.

My father and his friend suffered a terrible accident, one that cost both of them their lives.

My father was deep in debt and, unfortunately, paid with his own life.

When we went to identify the body, that was the moment I remembered: not the car, or the accident, but the tape.