Chapter 3: The Devil's Recording

Scott's hands wouldn't stop shaking as he drove through Havenwood's dead streets. Every few seconds, he glanced in the rearview mirror, expecting to see Officer Chen's puppet form shambling after them, but there was only darkness.

Beside him, Matt had curled into himself, knees drawn up to his chest, rocking slightly. The motion reminded Scott uncomfortably of the sound they'd heard from the Kowalski house—that rhythmic creaking that had preceded everything going wrong.

"We have to go back," Scott said suddenly.

Matt's head snapped up. "What?"

"The tape. It was still playing when we left. There might be more—information about what these things are, how to fight them."

"Are you insane?" Matt's voice cracked. "You saw what happened to Officer Chen. You heard—"

"I heard a recording of her death, yeah. But I also heard her conducting an interview with you. She was trying to understand this thing, just like we are." Scott took a shuddering breath. "That tape might be the only record of what we're dealing with."

Matt was shaking his head violently. "No. No, we're not going back there. That thing—the Puppeteer—it's probably still in the building. Waiting."

"Then we'll be careful. In and out, grab the tape, and get the hell away from here."

"You don't understand," Matt whispered. "You didn't see what it did in the office building. How it moved. It's not just one thing—it's everywhere at once, sliding through the walls, the ceiling, like it owns the whole structure."

Scott pulled the car to the curb and turned to face Matt fully. In the streetlight's glow, the man looked like he'd aged ten years in the past hour.

"Matt, listen to me. We don't know anything about this thing except what we've seen. That tape—Officer Chen was getting information from you, real information. Maybe there's something we missed, something that could help us survive."

Matt stared at him for a long moment, then let out a broken laugh. "Survive? You think we're going to survive this?"

"I think we're going to try."

They sat in silence for several minutes, the only sound the engine's idle and their own ragged breathing. Finally, Matt uncurled himself and wiped his face with the back of his hand.

"If we do this—and I'm not saying we should—we need rules. No splitting up. No heroics. We get the tape and we leave."

Scott nodded. "Agreed."

The return trip to the police station felt like driving into the mouth of hell. The building squatted under its harsh lights, the open doorway a black maw waiting to swallow them. Scott parked across the street this time, engine running, doors unlocked.

"Ready?" he whispered.

Matt's face was pale as bone. "No. But let's go anyway."

They crossed the street like soldiers approaching a minefield, every step deliberate and careful. The silence pressed against them, broken only by the distant hum of streetlights and the soft whisper of wind through empty trees.

The station's interior looked exactly as they'd left it—overturned furniture, scattered papers, the metallic smell of blood hanging in the air like incense. But something felt different. Expectant.

They moved through the bullpen with agonizing slowness, stepping around debris, avoiding the spots where the floor creaked. Scott's eyes kept drifting to the damaged ceiling tiles, searching for any sign of movement in the shadows above.

The hallway stretched before them like a gauntlet. The interrogation room door still hung open, spilling weak light across the bloodstained floor.

Click. Whirr. Click. Whirr.

The tape recorder was still running.

Scott stepped into the room first, his eyes immediately drawn to the severed arm cuffed to the table. In the harsh fluorescent light, he could see details he'd missed before—the torn flesh at the elbow was ragged, as if something had simply grabbed and yanked until the joint separated. No clean cuts, no surgical precision. Just raw, animal violence.

The tape recorder sat beside it, its reels turning steadily. Scott could see they were near the end of the recording, maybe ten minutes of tape left.

"How long was this thing recording?" he muttered, reaching for the device.

Matt grabbed his wrist. "Don't touch it yet. Listen."

On the tape, Officer Chen's voice had returned, but it sounded different now—flatter, more mechanical:

"This is Officer Chen. The suspect has been secured. All units can return to normal patrol."

Even through the static and distortion, Scott could hear the wrongness in her tone. It was her voice, but stripped of all humanity, all personality. Like a computer trying to mimic human speech.

The recording continued: "Dispatch, this is Chen. False alarm at the station. All clear."

A new voice crackled through—the radio dispatcher: "Copy that, Chen. You had us worried there for a minute."

"No need for concern," the Chen-thing replied. "Everything is under control."

Scott felt sick. The creature had used Officer Chen's voice to call off any backup, to ensure no one would come looking. How many other calls had it made? How many other people had it lured into its web?

The tape played on, but the next section was different. Older. The voice quality changed, becoming tinnier, more distant:

"This is Detective Morrison, badge 189. The time is approximately 2:30 AM. I'm investigating reports of missing persons in the industrial district."

Matt looked confused. "That's not from tonight. This tape has multiple recordings on it."

Scott's blood chilled as understanding dawned. "It's been collecting them. The voices. Recording them."

Detective Morrison's voice continued: "Found evidence of a struggle at the Hartwell Building. Blood, but no bodies. Witnesses report seeing..." A pause, static. "This is going to sound crazy, but they report seeing people being pulled into the ceiling."

The quality shifted again, another recording overlaid: "This is Captain Rodriguez. We have a situation at Memorial Hospital. Multiple casualties, but the bodies... they're not staying dead."

And another: "Fire Chief Williams here. Responding to reports of screaming from the old warehouse district. Jesus Christ, what is that thing?"

Voice after voice, authority figure after authority figure, all eventually falling silent or transformed into the same flat, mechanical repetition. The tape was a graveyard of the town's protectors, their final moments preserved like insects in amber.

"It's learning," Matt whispered. "Every person it takes, it gets their voice, their authority. It's been systematically destroying the chain of command."

The most recent recording resumed—Officer Chen's interrogation of Matt from earlier that evening. But now Scott could hear details he'd missed before. In the background, behind the voices, there were other sounds. Wet sliding noises. The creak of ceiling tiles shifting under weight.

The thing had been there the entire time, listening, learning.

Officer Chen's scream cut through the recording again, but this time Scott forced himself to listen past it. In the moments after her death, he could hear something else—a sound like a massive snake slithering through water, punctuated by smaller noises. Clicks and snaps, like joints popping.

Then came the voice—Officer Chen's voice, but wrong:

"Testing. Testing. This is Officer Chen." A pause. "This is Officer Chen. Testing."

It was practicing. Learning to use her voice, her authority, her identity.

The recording continued, and Scott heard his own voice calling out earlier that evening: "Hello? This is Scott Miller. We need help."

His blood turned to ice. The thing had recorded them. It had their voices now.

Matt must have realized the same thing because he was backing toward the door, shaking his head. "We have to go. Right now."

But Scott was transfixed by what came next. After his own voice, there was a new sound—different from the wet sliding. This was more mechanical, like gears turning or pulleys creaking. And underneath it, barely audible, something that might have been whimpering.

Human voices, distorted and muffled, as if coming from far away or through water.

"Help us," came a chorus of voices, barely recognizable as human. "Please help us."

Not the flat, recorded pleas of the puppets, but genuine terror. The real voices of the victims, somehow still conscious, still trapped inside whatever hell the creature had made of their bodies.

The tape ended with a sharp click, the reels spinning empty.

In the sudden silence, Scott could hear his own heartbeat thundering in his ears. He reached for the recorder with trembling hands.

"Don't," Matt hissed. "Leave it."

"We need this. It's evidence. Proof of what's happening."

"It's also bait," Matt shot back. "Why do you think it's still running? It wants us to take it."

But Scott was already lifting the device, ejecting the cassette tape. The plastic felt unnaturally warm against his fingers, as if it had been sitting in sunlight.

That's when they heard it—their own voices, echoing from somewhere deeper in the station:

"Hello? This is Scott Miller. We need help."

Perfect reproduction, down to the last inflection.

Matt's face went white. "It knows we're here."

The voice came again, closer now: "We need help. Please, we need help."

But there was something else underneath it—that mechanical creaking sound from the tape, like pulleys and chains.

"Run," Matt whispered.

They bolted from the interrogation room, Scott clutching the cassette tape like a lifeline. Behind them, their own voices called out in perfect mimicry:

"We need help. This is Scott Miller. Please, we need help."

The sound followed them through the hallway, through the bullpen, across the blood-stained lobby. But as they reached the front door, Scott heard something that stopped him cold.

Another voice, one they hadn't heard before, calling from somewhere in the building's depths:

"This is Maya Rodriguez. Is anyone out there? I'm trapped in the basement. Please, someone help me."

The voice was different from the others—raw with genuine terror, human in a way the puppet voices weren't. Real.

Matt grabbed Scott's arm, pulling him toward the exit. "It's not real. It's another trick."

But the voice came again: "Please, I can hear you up there. I've been hiding for hours. That thing... it got everyone else, but I found a place it can't reach. The sub-basement, behind the evidence locker. Please don't leave me here."

Scott hesitated. Everything about the voice screamed authenticity—the fear, the desperation, the specific details about the station's layout.

"Scott, no," Matt pleaded. "It's learning. Getting better at mimicking real emotion."

"This is Maya Rodriguez," the voice continued. "Badge 445. I'm a transfer from the county. Please, if anyone's out there..."

The details were too specific, too real. No recording could capture this level of authentic terror.

But as Scott stood frozen between rescue and survival, he heard something that made his decision for him. From somewhere above, the mechanical creaking had returned, along with that wet sliding sound.

The Puppeteer was moving.

Scott shoved the cassette into his pocket and ran, Matt beside him, as their own voices echoed through the station behind them:

"We need help. This is Scott Miller. Please, we need help."

They burst into the night air, into their car, into the false safety of motion. But as they drove away, Scott couldn't shake the sound of that last voice—Maya Rodriguez, badge 445, trapped in the basement.

Real or fake, human or puppet, her voice followed them into the darkness, another entry in the devil's own recording.