by Steven Patchett
(900 words)
I hadn’t heard a crash or cries of distress, only the ambulance screaming past my record store, sirens howling on the way to scoop up what was left. I went to look but didn’t get closer than my doorway, watching a crowd gather, vulture-like, for the scraps. Their murmurations of suppressed disgust reached me from where I stood.
The first responders took their time and left in funeral silence, which told me everything I needed to know.
Propped against my shop window was a brown paper sleeve stuck together with tape. I picked it up, feeling the weight of the contents. My name and shop were written on it, barely legible in a wild hand that had scrawled it in black marker. I figured it was another donation–it happened now and then. I took it inside after a last pitying look at someone else’s tragedy unfolding up the street.
The accident had drawn the foot traffic away, so I figured I’d close up early, dropping down the shutters as the men in white coveralls cleaned up the mess. They were using pressure washers to rinse the blood off the asphalt on the corner of 6th and main.
It seemed like someone had just exploded in the middle of the junction. I tried not to think about the morbid interest that tingled the pit of my stomach.
In the flat above my store, I snipped the tape from the package and slid the record onto my cotton-gloved hand. It wasn’t vinyl. It was an acetate, cold to the touch, a single-sider, no label, the run-out groove just ending at the dead wax in the centre. And it was glass, coated in lacquer. A hand-cut master, probably dating from the second world war, when aluminium was in short supply. Extremely rare, extremely valuable. And a freely given donation.
It looked to be in excellent condition. Pristine. But the only way to be sure would be to listen to it. I checked the sleeve again for a note. There was nothing, but something was sticky on the bottom edge. I brought it under a light to look, shuddering at the streak of nearly dried blood that my questing hand had found. I started to retch, and ran to the bathroom, taking off the stained glove and throwing it in the trash. I thrust the paper sleeve down there with it.
Whiskey settled my nerves, and I gently placed the master onto my player, making sure everything was right. I didn’t have much in the way of recording equipment, but that could be arranged later.
I plugged in my headphones, and started the machine, closing my eyes as the needle dropped into the lead-in groove.
Someone breathing close to a microphone, rhythmical and slow. No, the sounds were waves rolling on a shore, then the crunch of footsteps, on something like… shale, stones? A pebble beach. I had a sense of night, the wind rushing past, sounding so real, I shivered.
It was a pity it wasn’t some forties crooner and a forgotten track, but I was invested now; this kind of recording was highly unusual. It was clearly a tape to disc transfer, but why make a master for something like this? I was compelled to keep listening.
There was a distant sound, like a bell ringing from a lonely church spire. The recording seemed to leave the beach, the pitch becoming softer, but with an echo about it. The bell quieted, and I could hear the drip, drip of water. They’d moved into a cave, perhaps?
There was a sound, like a whistle, low at first, not painful, but it reverberated around in my headphones and I winced as the volume rose. Before I could lift my headset away, the sound abruptly stopped, and I could hear what could only be voices from somewhere ahead of me, the rumble of symphony, harmony, like a choir.
The recorder started to move again, and the voices grew louder. I kept my eyes closed. The sounds were so clear it was almost as if I were there.
“I don’t know if I can go on.”
His voice stunned me. There was a tremor in it, desperation, want. He sounded as if he were in the room beside me, crouching in the dark.
“You must,” I replied. I don’t know why I spoke, I may have screamed it, unable to hear myself while cocooned in the recording.
He started again and the chanting grew louder still. I couldn’t make out words–it was in some language or dialect I couldn’t understand. The cadence was like nothing I’d ever heard.
“Oh, oh dear god,” he said, as the chanting abruptly ceased.
There was a sound.
Like a fire blooming in forgotten depths.
Like a hurricane in my mind.
A voice was in it, words like quicksilver, sharp as lightning. They echoed in my head, agony swelling in my skull as pressure mounted. I screamed, my own voice muffled as my eardrums burst. I opened my eyes to see writhing shadows on the wall, silhouetted in a light that wasn’t there. I clawed the headphones away from my bleeding ears, but still, the voice remained; growing louder, more insistent, more demanding. A wordless voice that I could not ignore. I turned to the player. The stylus hung over the spinning disc. The recording had ended, how long ago, I couldn’t tell.
END
Steven Patchett is an Engineer, Father and Writer in the North East of England. His works can be found at Ellipsis Zine, Trembling with Fear and Retreat West. He’s on Twitter far too much, being encouraging. @StevenPatchett7