The Fourth Take

In 2003, when I was nine, my mother bought one of those bulky cassette recorders—the kind with the chunky buttons and the little red light that blinked when it was recording. We lived in a drafty farmhouse on the edge of a pine forest, and the nearest neighbor was half a mile down a dirt road. That evening, my father had just gone upstairs to take a shower, and the rest of us—my mother, my older brother Sam, my infant twin sisters, and I—were gathered in the living room, the blue glow of the television flickering over the worn couch.

I was mesmerized by the recorder, its plastic shell smooth and cold. I grabbed it and pressed the red button, giggling as I made silly noises and sang nonsense songs. Sam was doing his homework at the coffee table, and the twins were babbling in their playpen. The TV murmured a sitcom in the background. I must have recorded four or five takes, each time pressing stop, rewinding, and listening to my own silly voice crackle back through the tiny speaker.

On my fourth attempt, I had been particularly goofy, imitating a robot and then a monster. When I rewound and played it back, everything seemed normal at first. My voice, the babies, the TV, and even the creak of the floorboards upstairs where Dad was showering. But near the end, just as I was about to stop, I heard something else. A voice—not mine, not Sam’s, not my mother’s—whispering, clear as day, riding just under my own laughter. It said, in a low, raspy whisper: ‘Why do you keep recording the same thing?’

I felt a cold knot tighten in my stomach. I rewound and played it again, pressing my ear close to the speaker. There it was again, unmistakable: ‘Why do you keep recording the same thing?’ I looked up at the room. Mom was knitting, oblivious. Sam was chewing on a pencil. The twins were asleep. The voice didn’t sound like any of them. I played it a third time, and the whisper came earlier, overlapping my voice, as if it was getting closer.

I dropped the recorder on the couch, my heart pounding. ‘Who said that?’ I asked, my voice shaky. Everyone looked up, confused. Mom said, ‘No one said anything, honey. You were just playing.’ I tried to explain, but they brushed it off, telling me I had probably recorded over something or the radio was bleeding through. But I knew what I heard. I shoved the recorder under a cushion, vowing to never touch it again.

That night, after I had gone to bed, I couldn’t sleep. The image of that recorder, with its blinking light, haunted me. At around midnight, I crept downstairs to get a glass of water. The house was silent, save for the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway. As I passed the living room, I saw the recorder sitting on the coffee table, where I had left it. The little red light was on, but no one else was awake. I froze. The light flickered, and from the speaker, in that same raspy whisper, I heard: ‘You can’t stop me. I’m in the tape now.’

My blood ran cold. I ran back to my room, slamming the door and burying my head under the pillow. I didn’t sleep that night. The next morning, I told my mother, begged her to throw the recorder away. She just laughed, telling me my imagination was running wild. But I could see her hesitate when she looked at the recorder, a flicker of unease in her eyes.

Weeks passed. I refused to go near the recorder, but the whispers only seemed to grow louder. At night, I would hear them from the drawer where my mother had stored it—muttering, shifting, as if the tape was slowly rewinding itself. One evening, I found Sam sitting in his room, his face pale, holding the recorder. ‘I heard it too,’ he said, his voice trembling. ‘It knows our names now.’

We knew we had to destroy it. We took it out to the burn barrel behind the barn, my father following us with a confused look. We dropped the recorder into the barrel and lit a match. As the plastic melted and the tape warped, the whisper echoed from the flames: ‘You can’t burn me. I’m not on the tape. I’m in you.’

We stood there, watching the blackened remains, until the fire died. But as we turned to go back inside, we heard it again—coming from the house, from the upstairs window where my father had been showering that night. The voice was clearer now, more insistent: ‘Why do you keep recording the same thing? Because I’m already here. I’ve always been here.’

We moved out of that house a month later, but the damage was done. To this day, whenever I hear static, or a faint hiss on a phone line, I catch that whisper, just at the edge of my hearing, asking the same question. And I still don’t know how to answer it.