The Third Track

The house on Maple Street had a peculiar history, but the Ashfords didn’t care about that when they moved in. They were drawn to the wrap-around porch and the ancient oak in the backyard. Their first week was uneventful, save for the constant hum from the old radiators. But then, one evening, their youngest, Benny, was plinking out a nursery rhyme on the toy piano his grandmother had given him. His father, Dale, was recording a video to send to his sister. As Benny played ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,’ a low, guttural murmur bled through the recording—a voice not belonging to any family member. Dale played it back, over and over, but the murmur was only in the video, never in the room. His wife, Karen, laughed it off, blaming interference from the ham radio operator next door.

A week later, Dale discovered a locked door in the basement he hadn’t noticed before. The real estate agent had never mentioned it. Behind it, he found a small room with a dusty reel-to-reel tape recorder and a stack of labeled tapes. The labels were handwritten, each with a date and a phrase like ‘Maude’s Last Words’ or ‘The Muttering.’ Curiosity gnawed at him. He threaded a tape marked ‘Third Floor, 1952’ and pressed play. The recording was of a man sobbing, interspersed with a voice that seemed to be answering him, but in a language Dale had never heard. As the tape played, the house seemed to tighten around him. He turned it off, but the last phrase echoed in his mind: ‘They’ll hear the third track.’

Meanwhile, Dale’s niece, Petra, had a similar incident. She and her kids were goofing off in her apartment, filming a silly video with her phone. When she reviewed it, the background audio contained a faint, rhythmic chanting, layered over their laughter. The chant was identical to the last utterance on the tape. Petra tried to scrub the audio, but the chant persisted, growing clearer with each replay. That night, her phone rang at 3:33 a.m. The caller ID showed ‘Unknown.’ When she answered, she heard only that same chant, now at full volume, before the line went dead.

The following weekend, Dale took the reel-to-reel to a sound engineer friend, who discovered a ‘third track’ hidden beneath the main recordings. On that track was a repeated segment: a woman’s desperate plea, ‘Don’t open the door to the parlor. It waits behind the wallpaper.’ Dale had never noticed a parlor in the house. He searched and found a wallpapered room—the paper was peeling back in one corner, revealing a dark opening large enough to crawl into. That night, he had a dream: he was walking through a long corridor, and at the end, a door stood ajar, releasing a sigh that sounded like a name.

The next morning, Dale retrieved the tape labeled ‘The Parlor’ and played it. The recording was of a man describing a ‘presence’ that had taken residence in the walls, speaking through vibrations in water pipes and the hum of electricity. The tape ended with a soft click, and then a new sound: a knock, coming from inside the wall behind the tape player. Dale didn’t sleep that night. He stayed in the kitchen, drinking coffee, until the dawn light leaked through the blinds.

His son, Benny, came downstairs, groggy, and asked, ‘Daddy, who was singing with me yesterday?’ Dale felt ice in his veins. ‘What do you mean, buddy?’ Benny shrugged. ‘The man behind the wall. He knew all the words.’ Dale pulled his son close, but his eyes fixed on the wallpaper in the hallway, where the pattern seemed to shimmer and shift, as if it were breathing.

The next tape was unlabeled. Dale played it in the dead of night. It was a recording of a child’s voice, singing a lullaby in a language that made the air in the room grow cold. The child stopped mid-verse and whispered, ‘He’s here. He’s always been here.’ The tape ended with the sound of static, but under it, Dale could hear his own son’s voice, faint, calling out, ‘Dad? Dad, I’m in the parlor.’ Dale rushed to the parlor, but the door was locked from the inside. He threw his shoulder against it, but it wouldn’t budge. He ran to the basement, grabbed an axe, and hacked at the door until the wood splintered. Inside, the room was empty. The wallpaper was pulled back, and the opening was wider than before, now large enough for a man. A draft emanated from it, smelling of soil and rust.

He called Petra, who was still troubled by the chanting. ‘I think I know what it is,’ he said, his voice shaking. ‘It’s a calling. It wants to come through—but not into the room. Into the recordings. Into our voices.’ Petra hung up, refusing to believe. Her phone then vibrated with a new message: a video she hadn’t taken. It showed her kids sleeping in their beds, and from the corner of the frame, a pale figure was emerging from the wall, its mouth moving in a silent chant. She screamed and ran into their room, but the children were gone.

Dale returned to the basement and pulled every tape from the shelf. He broke them, one by one, scattering the magnetic ribbon across the floor. As the last tape snapped, the house shuddered. The phone rang. It was Petra, sobbing. ‘They’re back,’ she whispered. ‘They came back, but they’re not the same. They’re asking for you.’ Dale dropped the phone. In the silence, he heard a faint melody from upstairs—the toy piano, playing ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,’ but with an extra verse, hummed by a voice that didn’t belong to his son. He ran up the stairs, but the nursery door was locked. He pressed his ear to the wood, and the muttering began, soft and sibilant, filling the corridor. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he was standing in the parlor, the wall behind him sealed, and the room was filled with reel-to-reel tapes—thousands of them, all labeled with his family’s names.

The house didn’t appear in any records after 1952. The neighbors said it had been empty for decades. But the Ashfords still live there, in a way. Visitors hear a toy piano playing in the attic, and if they hold their phone up, they capture a faint, chanting voice that urges them to listen to the third track—the one that reveals what truly waits behind the wallpaper.