The Wet News Tape

In the autumn of 2009, I was a graduate student living in a decaying Victorian house on the outskirts of a small, rain-soaked town in the Pacific Northwest. My only companion was a taciturn handyman named Elias, who slept in a cramped room above the garage. The house had belonged to my late great-aunt, a woman of peculiar habits, and it still held the faint scent of mothballs and old parchment.

That particular Saturday, I had stayed at my girlfriend’s apartment across town, but I left early to catch the 11 PM news on my old CRT television. My thesis was on the psychological effects of auditory stimuli, and I had been recording newscasts to analyze the tone and pacing of the anchors. As I sat in the dimly lit living room, I pressed the record button on my digital voice recorder and leaned back in the creaky armchair.

The news was mundane: a local election, a minor traffic accident, a feature on a new museum. But just after the weather segment, I heard a distinct knock at the front door. Three slow, deliberate knocks. I assumed it was Elias, checking if I was home or perhaps relaying a message from my parents, who lived four hours away. I called out, ‘I’m here, and I’ve locked all the doors.’

No response. I continued recording, thinking Elias might have gone back to his room. A minute passed, then another knock came, this time more insistent. I sighed, paused the recording, and walked to the door. When I opened it, no one was there. The porch light flickered, and a cold drizzle began to fall. I stepped out, peering into the darkness, but the driveway was empty. Elias’s light was out. Perplexed, I returned inside, locked the door, and resumed my recording.

As the news anchor moved to sports, a new sound emerged from my recorder. I had forgotten to unpause it, but I distinctly heard a wet, shuffling noise, like something dragging itself across the floor. I rewound the tape and played it back. There it was, under the anchor’s voice: a faint, rhythmic scraping. My heart began to race. I attributed it to the old house’s plumbing or perhaps a tree limb against the window. But the sound was too deliberate, too lifelike.

Ten minutes later, the knocking returned, but this time from the back door, which led to the overgrown garden. I felt a chill run down my spine. I grabbed a flashlight and crept to the back. The door was unlocked, swinging slightly in the wind. I called out for Elias, but only the rain answered. I shone the light into the garden, and among the tall weeds, I saw a glint of metal. It was a keychain, one of those brass keychains shaped like a fish. It belonged to my girlfriend, Lena. She had lost it months ago, and I had forgotten about it. But what was it doing here?

I picked it up, the metal cold and wet. As I held it, I heard a whisper from the recorder, which I had left inside. It was not a voice, but a sound like someone gasping. I ran back inside, the tape still rolling. I rewound to the exact moment of the knocking. This time, I listened with headphones. Beneath the knocks, I heard a woman’s voice, muffled as if underwater, saying, ‘Let me in.’ My blood turned to ice. The voice sounded like Lena’s, but distorted.

I called Lena, but her phone went straight to voicemail. I left a frantic message. Elias then emerged from his room, looking pale. He said, ‘I heard knocking too, but it came from the cellar.’ We both descended the narrow wooden stairs to the basement, which was cluttered with old furniture and boxes. The air was thick with moisture. At the far corner, there was a sink, and the tap was dripping. As we approached, I noticed a dark stain spreading across the floorboards, as if something had soaked the wood. Elias knelt, touched the stain, and recoiled. ‘It’s cold,’ he said, ‘like ice.’

Then, my recorder, still in my hand, began to emit a high-pitched squeal. I fumbled to turn it off, but it stopped on its own. In the ensuing silence, we heard a soft thud from above, like a wet body falling onto the hallway rug. We rushed upstairs, but the hallway was empty, save for a trail of wet footprints leading from the front door to the living room, where the television was now showing static. The recording had stopped, and when I played it, there was only silence for ten seconds, then a single, clear word: ‘Remember.’

The rest of the night was a blur of paranoia. I searched every room, every closet, but found nothing. At dawn, the rain ceased, and I saw that the wet footprints had vanished, leaving no trace. Lena called back, saying she had been asleep and had missed my call. But when she asked why I was so upset, I couldn’t explain. The only clue was that keychain, which I still clutched. It was then I noticed a small engraving on the back, which I had never seen before: a date, 1994. The year I was born. The year my great-aunt had died under mysterious circumstances in this very house.

I have never been able to explain what happened that night. The recorder, now a relic of that evening, still holds the faint sound of the knocking, and sometimes, in the dead of night, I play it back. There is always that whisper, always that word: ‘Remember.’ But I don’t know what I’m supposed to remember. And in the quiet hours, when the house settles, I hear the knocking again, and I wonder if it will ever stop.