The Cassette Tapes

Iris fled to the guest room—her room, though it still felt like the servant’s quarters it had been a century ago. She locked the door, wedging a straight-backed chair under the knob. The house felt porous, compromised. Julian had keys to everything, including her future.

She sat on the bed, hugging the manila envelope to her chest. The blank passport inside was a radioactive isotope, proof of a crime she couldn't yet name but could feel in the marrow of the house.

*Don't go looking for ghosts.*

She didn't need to look. They were screaming from the walls.

She pulled the envelope out, checking the contents again. Passport. Letter. That was it. No money, no instructions. Just the tools of a disappearance that never happened.

She needed to know what happened in the gap. The space between the invoice in September and the "departure" in October.

She looked at the pile of Elias’s clothes she had rescued from the donation box. The denim jacket. The flannel shirts.

She grabbed the shoebox she had found under the sweaters. It was taped shut with masking tape that had yellowed and peeled with age. On the lid, in Elias’s messy scrawl: *mixtapes / do not touch*.

Iris tore the tape. Inside, a jumble of cassette tapes. The Cure. R.E.M. Depeche Mode. The soundtrack of a 1990 teenager.

But at the bottom, there were three tapes without labels. Just dates written in black marker.

*Sept 15.*
*Sept 22.*
*Oct 4.*

Iris dug through her own bag, finding the old Sony Walkman she had saved from her college days. She popped in the first tape. *Sept 15.*

She put the headphones on. The hiss of magnetic tape filled her ears.

"Testing," a voice said. It was young, cracking with adolescence but unmistakable. Elias. "Okay. This is... I don't know what this is. A log? A will?"

A pause. Then a sound like a door closing.

"Uncle Julian says it's for my own good. He says I'm sick. He says the police are looking for me because of... because of what happened at the quarry. But I wasn't there. I swear to god, I wasn't there."

Iris pressed the headphones closer. The quarry. That was where the missing girl had been last seen.

"He says if I stay in the basement for a few weeks, it'll blow over. He's building something. A room. He says it'll be safe. Like a bunker."

Elias’s voice trembled. "I don't want to go in there. It's dark. And he took my shoes."

The tape clicked off.

Iris swapped it for *Oct 4*.

"Day 4," Elias whispered. The audio quality was worse, echoing. He was in the room. "Uncle Julian says it's temporary. But he put a lock on the outside. I heard him drill it. He says I'm confused. He gave me pills. Blue ones. He says I need to sleep so I don't remember the bad things."

A sob, choked back.

"I didn't do anything. Why won't Mom answer me? I yell for her, but the walls are too thick. He put foam in them. He said it was for soundproofing. So I could play my music."

A long silence, filled only by the hum of the tape.

"He's rewriting me," Elias whispered. "He's making me crazy so he can keep the money. The trust fund unlocks when I turn twenty-one. If I'm incompetent