The Vinyl Scratch

The day had been a blur of fluorescent lights and the drone of a thousand conversations at the county fair. I, Mara, had spent it helping my aunt at her booth, selling handmade candles that smelled of pine and cinnamon. By the time we packed up, my legs ached and my eyes stung. We got home around 11:30, and I fell into bed, my mind still buzzing with the day’s noise.

I dreamt of the old high school, the one I’d graduated from five years ago. The hallways were empty, and the lockers stood like silent sentinels. A girl I barely remembered, with mousy hair and a shy smile, approached me. She opened her mouth to speak, but her voice was a low hum, like a record spinning at the wrong speed. Then the scene shattered, and I was staring at a Scrabble board, floating in a void. The tiles were not plastic but carved from bone. They spelled: ‘THE L_RD IS MY S_VIOR.’

A chill ran through me. I knew it was a riddle, a test. In my dream, I thought the answer, simple and clear: ‘The Lord is my savior.’ The moment the thought formed, a guttural roar split the silence. It was a sound heavy with ancient malice, a voice that seemed to come from beneath the earth. ‘NOOOOOO!’ it bellowed, and my body began to vibrate, as if I were a struck tuning fork. I tried to move, to speak, but I was frozen, a prisoner in my own flesh.

I fought against the paralysis with every ounce of my will. My arm twitched, then moved, and I flung myself off the bed, hitting the cold floor with a thud. My heart hammered. I scrambled to my nightstand and grabbed the small silver cross my grandmother had given me. Its touch felt like a spark of warmth in that cold room. I stumbled to the guest room, locking the door behind me. I didn’t sleep in my own bed for two nights, and even now, I can’t shake the feeling that something had been in the room with me.

Days later, I found an old vinyl record in the attic, one from my father’s collection. It was scratched, and the label was worn, but I could make out a faint image: a Scrabble board with a missing tile. I put it on the turntable, and instead of music, a low whisper emerged, forming words I couldn’t quite understand, but I knew they were the same words from my dream. The record ended with a screech, and I threw it across the room, shattering it. But that night, I heard it again, whispering from the pile of broken plastic. And I knew it would never stop until I answered it correctly.