The Machine Under the Bed

It was the winter of 2004, and our family was packing for a trip to the coast of Oregon. I was twelve, my brother was seven, and we’d spent the evening before our departure glued to a show about paranormal investigators. My brother, being the impressionable kid he was, decided we needed to do our own ghost hunting. He grabbed his little voice recorder and we sat in the dim light of our room, whispering silly questions into the tiny microphone. We giggled at our own ‘spooky’ voices and made up ridiculous sounds to mimic the static we’d heard on the show. After a while, we got bored and went to bed, leaving the recorder on the floor near my dresser.

The trip was pleasant enough. We saw the rugged coastline, visited a lighthouse, and ate too much saltwater taffy. When we returned, I unpacked and noticed the recorder under my bed. I picked it up, puzzled, because I was certain I’d left it on my dresser. I shrugged it off as something my brother had moved, and tossed it onto my desk, not thinking much of it.

The next day, while my parents were outside unloading the car, my brother and I were in our room. He asked me to play the recorder, curious if we’d accidentally caught anything. I pressed play, expecting to hear our childish voices and maybe some static. The first few seconds were as expected: my brother asking ‘Are you here?’ in a comical deep voice, then me giggling. But then, the recording shifted. The sound of our laughter faded, replaced by a low, rhythmic breathing. My brother looked at me, his eyes wide. I laughed nervously and said, ‘It’s just the wind from the open window.’ But the window was closed.

The breathing continued, slow and deliberate, and then a voice, soft but clear, whispered: ‘Where have you been?’ I dropped the recorder as if it were on fire. My brother started to cry. I picked it up again, my hands shaking, and rewound it. We listened again. The same sequence: our voices, the laughter, then the breathing, and the whisper. It was unmistakable.

We told our parents, but they dismissed it as a prank, maybe from the neighbor kids who had been in the house while we were away? But the house was locked, and the only key was with our neighbors, who were elderly and deaf.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept the recorder in my desk drawer, but I could swear I heard faint breathing coming from it, even when it was off. I told myself it was my imagination. But then, the recorder turned on by itself. The tiny red light glowed in the dark, and the whisper came through, clearer this time: ‘You’re back.’ I screamed, waking my parents. When they came in, they found the recorder on the floor, playing static.

The next morning, I decided to get rid of it. I threw it in the trash, but later that day, it was back on my desk, the batteries drained. My brother refused to sleep alone, and we both started having nightmares. In mine, I was in the dark, and the whisper was all around me, asking questions I couldn’t understand.

By the end of the week, we moved to the guest room, but the recorder always appeared in our new room, no matter how many times we threw it away or buried it in the backyard. It was as if it was tied to us.

On Christmas Eve, we were sitting in the living room, trying to pretend everything was normal, when the recorder suddenly began playing from my pocket. I hadn’t even brought it in there. The voice was no longer a whisper but a harsh, grating sound: ‘You brought me here. You can’t leave me.’ My parents finally realized something was deeply wrong. They called a priest, but he could do nothing. He said the recorder was just a vessel for something that had latched onto our family, something that had been waiting in that empty house, and we had given it a way in.

We moved out of state the next month, leaving everything behind, including the recorder. But sometimes, in the quiet of a new house, I’d swear I could hear a faint breathing, and a soft voice asking, ‘Where have you been?’ And I knew, deep down, that the machine under the bed had found a new place to wait.