Lot 115 : I Digitized A Cassette That Should Not Exist

Set in the summer of '85, Blood Barn follows Josie and her six closest friends, as

a gather for one last weekend that her family secluded barn before college.

“But when a long buried family secret is disturbed, a malevolent spirit awakens, possessing”

them one by one, in a brutal quest for revenge. Critic Jesse Hopps and of Citidum calls it, a splattery love letter to '80s DIY horror. Once it gets going, it works. Blending the cabin in the woods paranoia of the evil dead with the possession-fueled chaos of the exercise.

Blood Barn delivers practical gaur, escalating dread, and a race to survive until sunrise.

Don't miss, Blood Barn. Watch the trailer and learn more now. Learn ad-free experience, visit the ObsidianCovonent.com.

“You'll find the air as a little cooler near the counter.”

Now then, Blood 115, an audio cassette, the show is cold at the touch, older than it ought to be. There are faint stress lines in the plastic, as if it has been gripped too tightly. Too often. Get ready to press play on, I digitized a cassette, that should not exist.

Before we begin, I want to point out some of the customers whose names have been etched in brass on this beautiful black I had made above the front desk. These are some of the members of the inner circle of the Antiquarium. We go by the ObsidianCovonent.

“Recent initiates include Peter Irizari, Bingo Bongo, Jim Clifford, Mad Scientist T.B.”

See Pupp, Rendsmith, Darcy Sharon, and Danny. We are ever appreciative of your devotion to the order. Go to the ObsidianCovonent.com to receive the sacrament. Sounds harmless enough, right? Welcome to the Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings, and odd goings on.

, and then, the Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings. I'm blind audio technician, yesterday I digitized a cassette. That should not exist.

I always know what time it is, even though I've never seen the hands of a clock in my life.

I'll let you in on a little secret. The morning sun warms the air behind the window at my back. That's how I can tell the hour. Light doesn't reach me, but heat always betrays where the sun is. My computer announces from the living room's shelf.

It's 9 o'clock, I know. Tuesday morning, we're out day. I don't go to the gym. Every corner of my apartment is familiar. Every object has its own sound, weight, scent.

It's much more comfortable to move here, in a space I know like my own heartbeat. Four steps from the bed to the wall bars, then a right turn, and my palm is already resting on the cold steel bar. You see, every motion comes from muscle memory. The rough, groove texture presses into my skin, a quiet reminder.

Hey, you used to train more than this. It's right, lately I've let myself go a little.

And every time I hear my old teacher's voice in my head, just because you can't see yourself, Victor doesn't mean you shouldn't take care of yourself. Growing up blind in a foster home, that sentence was worth more than you knew.

But the world of sound was always mine.

There, I always knew exactly where everything was, and there, nobody ever told me I wasn't good enough. That's where I found my success, too. I started my own little company, mostly digitizing and restoring older recordings. And it's been gone well.

Lately I've had plenty of work. Old cassettes, family tapes, criminal case evidence, radio archives, I've never given a questioners now.

“That's how low assist cassette ended up with me.”

The mailman brought it yesterday, small package, feather light, the paper felt rough, crinkling slightly under my fingers. I hate paper letters, but people are stubborn, so many stones just don't use them. The mailman read it out loud for me.

Good guy, always patient.

The cassette belonged to my father. He was a reporter in the '60s I'd like to have a digitized. That was it, nothing more, nothing less. Lowest wasn't very talkative evidently. When I first held the cassette, I felt it immediately, cold plastic with tiny cracks beneath

the surface, a little dust along the edges. Old tapes had their own sense, but this one, this one smelled ancient. A strange mix of sweet dust and metallic dryness made even stronger by the sterile air of my apartment.

“It's my hands slid across it, something washed over me.”

Not bad, just different.

I rarely get that feeling from a job, and whatever I do, something unusual is always waiting

on the other end. Everything in my studio is exactly where it's supposed to be. That's not a habit, it's a survival technique. It's something moves even an inch, the whole world tilts sideways in my head. On the left edge of my desk is the cassette deck.

To the right of it sits the digital interface, it's buttons marked with tiny raised dots. In front of me, my keyboard and mixing console. My headphones hang where I left them yesterday, over the top right corner of the monitor. There's a little scratch along the plastic ear cup. That's how I recognize it by touch.

I slide the cassette into the deck. The mechanism grips the tape with a soft, buzzing water. The click tells me a copper properly. My computer chimes, the system detected it. I put on the headphones.

The ear pads are still little cold, but my ears warm them quickly. Then, I press play. The button clicks a bit stiffer than usual. I make a metal note to oil the mechanism later. The tape starts to roll.

Nothing. Not the kind of nothing you get from a battle according. Not the airy hiss of an empty tape. This is the kind of nothing that feels like someone cut the sound out of the world. Absolute silence.

Only the faint mechanical hum of the deck tells me the tape is actually moving at all. What the hell? I stopped the playback and restarted. Still. Nothing.

I lift one side of the headphones with my fingers and I can clearly hear the soft, steady word of the tape turning. The machine is working, but there's no sound on the recording.

“At first, I think I messed something up.”

Maybe I connected the interface wrong, but cables sometimes loose in a pit. I run my fingers along each connector. Everything is firmly in place. No gaps. No loose ends.

I tapped the side of the headphones with my palm. A deep, soft thumb. The name sound is always. They're not broken. Then, half a second later, my computer speaks in its synthetic female voice.

Extremely low frequency range, dominant signal, 14.2 Hertz.

This frequency is not audible. I throw tightens. 14 Hertz? That's impossible.

“There's no way a handheld microphone from the 60's achieved cassette recorder no less”

could capture something that low. You'd need specialized lab equipment just to detect that kind of frequency back then. I press play again. That silence hits me like a fist of the chest. A deep, heavy emptiness that makes even my own breathing feel unreal.

The signal is continuous, amplitude, negative 70 h decibels according to the system it exists. It exists, but I can't hear it. I stopped the playback again, silence, normal silence. The kind my apartment breathes with. I tilt my head and concentrate.

“Then, I start the tape once more, silence, it shifts, it has weight, like the shape of”

the room changes from the tape is playing. Like my own breath echoes from the long direction, and then the computer erupts again. The signal on the recording cannot be identified, unknown source. A chill rips straight through my spine. This isn't a technical issue anymore, this is something else.

Something I'm not supposed to hear, or maybe something I should hear, just not like this. I place my hand in the cassette, it's still cold. I can barely feel the vibration through the plastic, but I know there's something on that tape.

“Something I should not be there, my curiosity won't let me go.”

That 14 Hertz nothing is still vibrating somewhere deep in my throat, and nothing that somehow feels like too much. The world is full of sounds we can hear, but the one's hiding beneath the threshold, the ones that seek through from below, those feel like something breathing under the world.

I have to know what's on this tape, my fingers rest on the keyboard, I find the shortcuts that scale audio up into something portable. Frequency range modified, multiplication factor 10. I swallow hard, start to playback, and hold my breath, the tape clicks, the mechanism

homes, and then finally, I hear something.

At first, it's just a distorted, scraping noise, like a speaker came over the tiny tear in it, then something sharper peeks through, and I realize it's door creeping open. From the pitch of the squeal, it's an old hinge, maybe a basement door, the kind that echoes and narrow forgotten places, I barely breathe, I tilt forward, listening like a hunting dog locked on a scent, then the entire soundscape changes.

The arrow in the recording seems to shift, the audio crackles once and suddenly, I hear wind, sharp, clean, rushing wind as if we were blowing right into my face, but it doesn't sound like city wind. This is deeper, emptier, almost cathedral-like, whoever recorded this somewhere huge, a cold shiver runs along my arms, even though I'm just sitting in my small warm room, then something

moves closer, footsteps, fast, determined, hard, sold steps, the sharp clap of shoes on wooden floorboards, someone's running. The microphone gets too close in the sound of storts, the steps exploding in my ears

for a split second, and then, sudden silence, not the silence of an empty room, the silence

of someone's standing motionless, in a giant, hollow space. A moment later, I hear tripping, not pipes, not a faucet, single droplets falling at perfect

this recording was not made in one place, where if it was, that place was impossibly large,

“shifting, inconsistent, as if the microphone were jumping through space and time, the”

next moment, the background, erupts, traffic, engines roaring past, old engines deeper, rougher, ragged, one of them screeches like the muffler is blown wide open, wind crashes in again, the footsteps returned, but farther away this time, and then, then, a man's voice, not the clean, directional voice of someone speaking into a mic, not even the muffled tone of someone in the room, it sounds like he's speaking, right next to me, his voice

is monotone, strained, almost suffocated, no one answers him on the recording, nothing

“moves in the background, no breath, no shuffle, no static, just that same sentence, over and”

over, like a damaged tape head stuck in a loop, the frequency graph on this thing was be a disaster and yet, there's something unmistakably human in his tone, uncomfortably human, I can't take it anymore, I ripped the headphones off, the earpads land with a soft thought on the desk, I leaned back and sit there in silence, not moving, not breathing, I need a break, I have to take a break, one moment my friend, something is begun playing,

that was not asked to, that should not be left unattended, make yourself at home, and I'll be right back, you're still with me, good, there is particular cruelty to recordings, they will repeat anything they are given, even questions, especially questions, shall we? The frequency graph on this thing was be a disaster and yet, there's something unmistakably human in his tone, uncomfortably human, I can't take it anymore, I ripped the headphones off,

the earpads land with a soft thought on the desk, I leaned back and sit there in silence,

not moving, not breathing, I need a break, I have to take a break, I don't smoke, I never

do, I know it's bad and it would stay inside an orexia voice, but right now I'm standing

“on my balcony in the warm summer air, taking long drags like it's the only thing keeping”

me steady, I shouldn't let it, but something inside me just needed it, how those contradictory sounds, the microphone wasn't capturing one place with several places all at once, on a take this old should be fucking impossible, and yet I heard it, I inhaled a bitter smoke, I can't see it but I feel the warmth in my mouth to scratch it running down my throat, from out here I can hear the city, distant cars, a dog barking somewhere, a door slamming a few streets

away, normal sounds, familiar sounds, they calm me down, bit by bit, my head finally starts

to clear, but the man's voice is still echoing in my chest, I'm not shaken because I'm scared, I'm shaken because I don't understand, my whole job is understanding sound, and this, this isn't like anything I've worked with before, I flick the cigarette into the metal tray, the ashes hiss softly when they hit, I close the balcony door and tap a twice to make sure it's fully shut, inside, everything is where it should be, every point

the apartment sits exactly in its place, this is my territory, I don't need sight here,

the floor board under my left foot dips just slightly, a tiny depression in the wood from

“when I moved in, that's how I know I'm on track, I find the edge of the desk, run my”

hand along it and sit down, the chair creaks the same familiar way, higher pitch on the left, lower on the right, everything is exactly where it belongs, except the headphones, my hands sweeps across the desk surface, the exact spot where I put them, nothing, I pad

across the whole desk again, still nothing, I'm sure I placed them here before stepping

outside, I even heard them crack against the wood, I don't fuck with me, then I find them

“hanging from the top of the monitor, right where I usually leave them, but I didn't put”

them back, I know I didn't put them back, I grabbed the headphones, the earpads are warm, this is someone else who's been wearing the moments ago, my stomach tightness, I stand up

and sweep the apartment again front door lock, chain latch, everything is exactly the same

as before, except I had phones, maybe I really did put them there and just, I just forgot, it tells wrong with me, my heart beats slowly, saddles are at least a pretend steal, I sit

“back down in the studio chair and put their headphones on, time to keep going, whatever,”

well, over and on, I hit play, it means voice, it means voice, it means voice, it means then, he stops, not fades, he stops, as if someone sliced the sound clean off his throat, something else slides into the silence, a wet sticky crackle, not electrical, not mechanical, coming, someone, something is eating, not fast, not frantic, slow, patient, the mic is so close that I hear every moist smack, every quiet click of teeth, every squishy shift of saliva,

my stomach twists, I turn my head slightly, that would help, but of course it doesn't, then comes a deep, heavy thought, like something big, soft, fell from a height, a body you're a bag, probably a body, I don't want to guess, the next sound hits so suddenly my heart like water sheeding off a roof and underneath it, footsteps, slow, determined, each step lands with a wet, sucking squelch, toothpick for puddles, this is mud, heavy sticky, swamp

mud, someone is walking through it toward the microphone, then total silence, but the tape keeps moving, I hear the gentle steady scrape of it rolling through the deck, tilt, tilt, tilt, put now, they know it an audible silence means, it doesn't mean nothing is there, it means something is changing, the software speaks. Ultrasonic signal detected, 39,200 hertz, amplitude, minus 85 decibels, playback, not

possible, 39,000, that's higher than what most modern microphones keep in capture, a tape from the 60s shouldn't even know that frequency exists, my heart slams against my ribs, the razor thin line between fear and curiosity starts to blur, curiosity wins, okay,

for playback, let's take a deep breath, set the headphones on my ears, do my hands shake slightly

“and press play, the first, crackly, not distortion, it's fucking fire, the tight popping”

of embers, low and enclosed, like the microphone was dropped beside a campfire, my almost smell the smoke, though I know that's impossible, crackling fades, then a deep, distant rumble, an explosion, so loud the mic should have blown out, but it didn't, somehow it caught every detail, this recording is presented with the hope that it will light your path to Satan,

tail to the morning star, tail to the wretched skirt, have a second of silence, then

put steps again, soft, wet slaps of bare feet on hard concrete, the first distant, then

“faster, closer, the rhythm tightens, whoever or whatever it is, it's not running away”

it's running toward the recorder, closer, and closer, I hear breathing now, harsh, hungry, ragged breaths, and then the sound shifts behind me, as if someone is right behind my chair, I cast, and rip the headphones off my head, I throw him onto the desk so hard the plastic cracks against the wood and echo through the room, my breathing is uneven, my fingers shaking, I drag both hands down my face as if I could wipe the fear off with

my palms, my forehead is damp with sweat, my chest feels like it's going to tear itself open,

“it's the feeling you get when you hear something you never met to hear, but the tape keeps”

turning, the ear pads vibrate softly where they landed on the desk and then something seeps out of the sound, I lean in closer, I don't dare put them back on, I just hover

over them listening, it's screaming, I pitched stretched out of whales, and first one

voice than another, then more, overlapping, warping into each other, bending into a course of pain, I almost scream myself, I slam my hand down on the stop button, the deck squeaks in the screaming cuts off instantly, silence, finally, but my heart is still pounding like it's trying to escape my ribs, I stand up, my legs trembling like they made of lead, I need a glass of water, something simple, something normal, something to

track me back in a reality, I know where the kitchen is, three steps left and five forward, I've done it a thousand times, the movements are burned into my body, but now now my hand reaches into empty air, my fingers don't touch the rough wooden frame of the kitchen doorway, no familiar edge, just smooth wall, I run my hands higher, lower nothing, the walls still there, unbroken, the kitchen isn't where it's supposed to be,

my heart beat pulses in my throat, where's the door, my hand trembles as my finger scraped desperately along the flat surface, searching for something that should be there, and then someone speaks behind me, right behind my neck, so close I feel breath on my skin, a man's voice, his voice, the one from the tape, the one from the tape, he was pers, slow, and threatening, was it worth it, I'm sure, worth it, my blood freezes solid, I spin around, swing my arm blindly,

but there's no one there, only my empty apartment, only, wherever the fuck I am, only my ragged breathing echoing off the walls, who's here, who the fuck is here, the room is silent,

then suddenly as if a curtain snaps back into place, my hand finds the edge of the kitchen

doorway, it was always there, or just returned, I can't tell anymore, I step in and grab

a glass, the water is so cold, as it slides down my throat, chilling the terror inside

“me like ice, I splash some onto my face with my other hand, I have my worry, I think”

I won't worry, I think it's just the audio, that's all, it's just sounds, it's fucking me up, I don't believe it myself, but I'll say it anyway, maybe it'll help, I walk back

to where I believe the living room is, my fingers trail along the familiar shapes of furniture

clinging to every texture the promises safety, familiarity, by the time I reach the couch my breathing has slowed a little, I sit, the cushions sink under my weight, soft and comforting, and then, something crashes under the floor in front of me half a meter away, the exact

“same sound is on the tape that heavy, fleshy thud, I leave off the couch clutching my”

chest gasping for air, my whole body shakes, what the hell, what's happening, oh hold one arm out in front of me as if it could shield me, the room is silent again, nothing on the floor, I nudged the spot with my foot, just called the hardwood, nothing else, then breathing, quiet, what, come closer, from the bedroom doorway, from the dark, foot steps start pounding toward me fast, heavy bare feet slapping the floor and wet sticky bursts,

just like on the tape, I freeze, my body won't move, foot steps speed up, charging straight

“at me, like something is about to ram into my chest, the last second when I feel the”

air rush against my faces if something is inches away, I call it back or hit the floor hard, the running stops, right in front of me, so close the air trembles, but nothing touches me, not a hand, not a breath, only silence, and sitting there on the floor, my arm

raised to shield myself, I finally understand, I really did hear something on that tape,

something no human ear was meant to hear, something not human at all, something not from this world, I thought I understood the world of sad, I thought it was funny, I was fucking wrong, hope you enjoyed your new relic as much as I've enjoyed passing along its sorted history, it does come with our usual warning, absolutely no refunds, no exchanges, and we won't be held liable for anything that may or may not occur while the object is in your possession, if you've

got an artifact with mysterious properties, perhaps it's a company by a history of bizarre and disturbing circumstances, maybe you'd be interested in dropping it and it's story by the shop to share with other customers, please reach out to [email protected], a member of our team will be in touch, till next time we'll be waiting for you whenever you close your eyes, in the space between sleep and dream, during regular business hours of course or by appointment, only for you,

our best customer, you have a good night now! The antiquarium of sinister happenings, lot 1-1-5, I digitized a cassette that should not exist,

antique dealer, engineering production and sound design by Trevor Shand and Lauren Shand, theme music

“by the new brothers, additional music by Coag, Vivek Abashek, Clement Panchau, Nicholas Redding,”

and Conan Freeman, the antiquarium of sinister happenings, is created and curated by Trevor

Morgan Shand, follow us on Instagram and Twitter @ antiquariumpod, call the antiquarium at 646-41-71-97.