Poppa Mike’s Tape

by Kevin M. Folliard

Michael wouldn’t have chosen to spend summer vacation watching his grandfather slowly expire, but he knew now that was life. “When we lose people, we lose people,” Poppa Mike had told him after Grandma Cathy passed away. “We never get to choose when or how.”

        Michael had done all he could to make it easier on his mother. He stayed with her in the hospital, made sure there was always a family member at Poppa Mike’s bedside, and now, he promised he’d help clean out and ready his grandparents’ house for sale.

        But the afternoon when Mom and Dad left him alone to pack boxes, while they visited the estate attorney, Michael had other plans.

        The faded green carpet, wood paneling, and yellowing blinds in Poppa Mike’s office hadn’t been updated since the ’70s. Service medals, plaques, photos, and awards from his military career were hung and polished with care. Upon his antique corner desk was a leatherbound calendar planner and the polished awning of a banker’s lamp.

        A rolodex of fading, hand-written numbers flanked a tan ground line that Michael’s parents had disconnected earlier that morning. He wondered about all the contacts. How many of those numbers still reached the person they were supposed to.

        But it was the black Sentry Safe which had been a fixed structure in Poppa Mike’s office that now fascinated his grandson. His parents didn’t have the combo, but Michael did.

        Michael had been the only one present when Poppa Mike sat up, gripped his wrist like a vice, and wheezed out the numbers with wide-eyed urgency. “52 . . . 30 . . . 17 . . . 6!”

        “Poppa, I’ll get the nurse.”

        But he only squeezed harder, pulled Michael as close as possible. “52 . . . 30 . . . 17 . . . 6!”

        It was the last coherent thing he’d said, and it didn’t take Michael long to realize it had to be the combination. Michael wasn’t sure why at first that he kept the numbers to himself. There never seemed a good time to mention it, while his mother’s generation bickered over the arrangements.

        And then there was the whirlwind wake and funeral. Michael had listened to service members sing his grandfather’s praises, born witness to his mother’s soft sobs, observed his lawyer father butting heads with his uncles. The combination lay dormant in back of his mind.

        It was after they’d started cleaning and packing up Poppa Mike’s house that he’d determined to open the safe. His father mentioned trying to find a safe cracker, and Michael almost spoke up, but something stopped him.

        It wasn’t the thought of money.

        It was something else.

        The intensity in Poppa Mike’s eyes.

        It couldn’t just be money in there.

        Michael had asked his grandfather when he was little what was in the safe on several occasions, to which he always said “Important things, and we’ll leave it at that for now.” Nobody, it turned out, knew the safe’s contents, but they all assumed valuables.

        But Michael had also been told by Poppa Mike on many occasions, “Money isn’t all that important in the end.” So, if the safe contained “important things,” it couldn’t be money.

        Birds chittered in his grandparents’ overgrown yard. Morning sun filtered through the frayed edges of the ancient blinds and cast a beam over the antique safe’s dial. The silver paint of the etched numbers was hard to make out in places, but Michael could count up from 1, and he knew what notches to hit when he carefully spun the combo.

        52 . . .

        30 . . .

        17 . . .

        6.

        Hinges released, and the heavy door sighed open a crack. Michael breathlessly swung the door. Inside the cold shadows of the safe was a single shelf, a stack of manilla envelopes, an old cigar box, and a VHS tape labeled “COPY” in black marker.

        Michael rummaged through the envelopes. He wasn’t surprised to find that many of them contained personal letters, from friends in the military, and in one envelope, letters from his grandmother. Love letters from when he had been stationed overseas. Important things indeed. He opened the cigar box and froze when he found a handgun, and rounds of ammunition. That Michael carefully closed and set back where he’d found it.

        Another envelope caught his eye with “Interview 1977” scrawled on it, as well as a red stamp that read “COPY” and one that read “CLASSIFIED”.

        Michael carefully opened it to find long documents on legal paper, many of the lines were blocked off with black rectangles. Something about an incident in rural Pennsylvania in the ’70s, but witnesses’ names and details were all censored.

        He puzzled over the tape—a “COPY” but of what? He had seen not just one, but several old video cassette players in the hoard of appliances in the basement.

        It took Michael about 20 minutes of trial and error to hook a 1990s VCR to one of the boxy TVs in the cool labyrinthine shelves of his grandparents’ basement, but he set them up in the corner, pulled a dusty rocking chair up, slid the VHS from the safe into the top-loading tape deck, and hit play.

        At first, a black screen and white digital letters read:
                Interview Date: March 4^th, 1972
                Witness: Gabrielle Harker
                Date of Birth: October 5^th, 1930
                Incident Date: January 12^th, 1972

        The tape then showed a stocky woman in a green button-down shirt. Her hair was woven into a messy bun above hardened gray eyes, and her hands were folded into a massive double fist. She sat at a white table in a farmhouse kitchen with blue wallpaper and white cabinets.

        “State your name.” Came a semi-garbled voice. Rainbowed lines danced at the edges of the screen.

        “My name is Gabrielle Harker,” she said with a husky twang.

        “Tell us about yourself, Mrs. Harker, please.”

        She shrugged, smiled. “Basic things, I assume? My age? Occupation?”

        “Yes. Yes.”

        “My name is Gabrielle Harker. I’m 42 years young.” A sunny demeanor shined through as she relaxed. “I run my late husband’s apple orchard in Langston County, Pennsylvania.”

        “How long have you lived in Langston County?”

        “My whole life. Met Johnny, my husband, God rest his soul, in high school. Married shortly thereafter, and we inherited this land—this lovely house from his parents, who are now passed away as well.”

        “How did your husband pass away, Mrs. Harker?”

        “A brain tumor. Three years ago.”

        “My condolences. And you have no children.”

        She nodded. “That’s correct.” Her lips tightened, and her voice broke slightly. “Five miscarriages.”

        “Have you been diagnosed with any medical problems yourself recently? Any underlying,” the voice paused. “Any psychological or neurological issues that you are aware of?”

        “I’m fit as a fiddle.” She smiled. “Furthermore, I don’t drink. Don’t do drugs. Don’t even smoke.”

        “You aren’t prone to hallucinations or hysterics then, Mrs. Harker. Is that correct?”

        She raised an eyebrow. “I have suffered a lot of grief, sir, but I’m as level-headed as they come.”

        The man chuckled. “Yes, ma’am, and I’m included to agree with your self-assessment. This is all a matter of record.”

        She nodded.

        “Mrs. Harker, would you please tell us about the events that took place on your farm on January 12^th of this year?”

        Her eyes hardened. “It was cold. Still dark. I’m up and about at 5 a.m., usually check on the chickens and the horses after dawn, but . . .” She squinted, shrugged. “There was something in the air. That’s the best way to describe it. A heavy intuition that something wasn’t right. A sort of electricity I could taste on the tip of my tongue. Before I even finished my first cup of coffee, I decided to walk the grounds.

        “There had been fresh snowfall the previous evening, and there was this beautiful powdery blanket, like a scene off a Christmas card. So it was easy to notice a pair of unusual tracks that circled the house.”

        “Can you describe those tracks?”

        “Y-shaped, long, cloven feet. I thought it was a very large animal, with an unusual stride. But I didn’t imagine anything dangerous. I followed the tracks on impulse. And I noticed at one point—between the house and the stable—they just sort of,” she tossed her hands in the air. “Poof! Stopped. There wasn’t anywhere for this thing to go, unless it sprouted wings and flew. But they weren’t bird tracks.” She shook her head.

        “I took a good look in every direction, and then I heard the horses whinnying. They were worked up, and I got worried something dangerous was in there. I debated going back for the shotgun, but I just . . . I thought for certain it would be an animal. Something that would run off if I made a big fuss. So I just charged right over there.”

        “And what did you see?”

        She lowered her voice. “A white devil is how I would describe it. Six feet tall, nude, genderless, reptilian, three fingered—three long, ugly fingers—and that face.” Gabrielle shuddered.

        “Can you describe the face?”

        She covered her mouth, closed her eyes, and shook her head.

        “What was the being doing when you first discovered it?”

        “Staring down one of our horses, leaning over the stable gate. I just froze and he tilted his head at me.”

        “What makes you think it was a ‘he,” the man asked. “Before you described it as genderless.”

        “Well, yes, I suppose, I’m not really sure, but the voice—once it spoke—was deep, masculine. But you’re certainly correct, not a thing between its legs.”

        “And when it spoke, what did it say?”

        “We spoke for a long while. I’ll do my best to recall… It asked me who I was. I said my name, I think. Explained this was my farm, that it was trespassing. I asked him to leave. And he said that he couldn’t. ‘I can’t just yet,’ in fact, is how he put it.

        “And I asked why. It said it couldn’t always travel the same way backwards as forward. I don’t know what it meant by that. Then it asked me if I was frightened. It promised it wasn’t going to hurt me, but it said I was right to be frightened. And at that point, I ran back to the house and called the Sheriff. I thought, probably, by the time anyone arrived, the white devil would be gone. Figured I’d look crazy. But . . . he stayed.”

        “Did you wait in the house for the police to arrive?”

        She nodded.

        “How long did it take?”

        “Hard to say. Takes about 20 minutes from town.”

        “And when they arrived?”

        “I led them to the stables. And the white devil just waited there, patiently, stood outside the open doors, watched us approach. I stood back with the deputy. The Sheriff asked it a whole slew of questions. ‘Who are you? Where are you from?’”

        “Did the creature answer any of those questions.”

        “Cryptically it answered. Said it was from ‘another place,’ ‘a place we can’t go,’ that sort of thing. Said it arrived through a passage, ‘a hole in a life.’ And I would never forget this, because when the Sheriff asked ‘a hole in whose life?’ The creature pointed right at me. Its eyes glowed bright as stars, and it said ‘a hole in her life.’”

        “What do you think it meant by that?”

        “I think it meant my grief. I think it somehow . . . followed a path carved out by my dead husband. And it couldn’t go back the way it came.”

        “Did the creature ever seem agitated? Menacing.”

        “Always, though its tone was often cordial. But I would say when the Sheriff started repeating his questions, the white devil’s frustration increased, and it was at about that time that the deputy led me back to the house, called for backup, and this whole thing escalated.”

        “Did you speak to it again before federal agents arrived?”

        “Not much. I went out to offer the policemen some coffee, and the devil asked me about a boy.” She shrugged. “A boy in a basement. I have no idea what that meant. But it seemed so certain there was a boy in my basement. The last boy in the basement of this farmhouse would have been my late husband, decades ago.”

        “Have you seen the entity or heard from it since it left your property?”

        She shook her head. “And my hand to God, I have not breathed a word of this to anyone. Not the papers. Not anyone. So you can tell your men to stop harassing me about that. Would you, please?”

        There was a long uncomfortable pause before the interviewer stated. “Your silence is appreciated, Mrs. Harker. I’ll certainly attest to how cooperative you’ve been. But if you don’t mind my asking, where do you think it came from?”

        “It’s not from outer space. It had no vessel. I think it came straight out of hell, and it seemed quite lost, and if you ask me, that’s a bit reassuring that hell isn’t here on Earth after all, wouldn’t you say?”

        “I’m not sure what I’d say, but I appreciate your perspective.”

        “May I ask something of you?” Garbrielle’s eyes darkened. “Did you kill it?”

        “Pardon me?”

        “Have you killed it yet? Can it even die?”

        After another long silence, the interviewer said, “I’m not at liberty to discuss that.”

        The tape went to black. Michael’s heart felt overstuffed in his chest. Every muscle in his body had grown tight, and he forced himself to take a long breath. At first, he thought the tape was over, but then another set of rainbowy static flowed across the screen, and another digital title card appeared with a pop of sound. Michael flinched as the words blazed in white digital text:

        Interview Date: March 9^th, 1972
                UNKNOWN BEING

        At first the screen seared with a blurry white color, and Michael thought the tape had ended after all, but his eyes adjusted, and he noticed the outline of something very bright, with huge silvery eyes. A lanky white thing sat behind a white table in a simple white room. The camera seemed to struggle to focus on it, but he saw distinctive three-fingered hands curl on the surface of the table.

        A different interviewer spoke from the previous section, “Do you have a name?” The voice was familiar, and Michael sensed immediately that it had to be his grandfather, much younger.

        The strange being tilted its head. It tapped the table with a gaunt finger, then a deep, bellowing voice said. “Names are unnecessary in the end.” The voice carried a strange, static fuzz that vibrated the speakers of the old box television set. Michael felt its words rattling in his teeth.

        “You didn’t answer my question,” Poppa Mike said. “I didn’t ask if names were necessary, I asked if you had one.”

        The being leaned forward. Its enormous eyes shimmered. “I do not require a name, and some day, you will lose yours.”

        “Where are you from?”

        “Another place.”

        “Can you describe the place where you’re from?”

        “Yes, I can.” The being gave a long raspy noise. “In this place, you never existed, and you never will. It’s a place of recesses turned outward. A realm where noise is the same as silence and words carry no meaning. It’s a river without water.”

        “You seem to be describing an impossible place,” his grandfather said calmly. “Somewhere that does not exist.”

        “Where I come from is lost the moment I leave,” the being said. “It’s true for you as well. It’s true for all sentient things. But your kind embraces the illusion of memory. It is an endearing and sad thing to construct the concept of time to delude yourself from the destruction of every moment, do you agree?”

        There was a long pause and static filled the emptiness as the creature awaited an answer.

        “I can’t be sure I agree,” Poppa Mike said. “How did you arrive at Mrs. Harker’s farm?”

        The voice boomed, “Through a hole in her life.” Static crackled across the old TV.

        “So you’ve explained before, but we still don’t understand the means of travel. Were you drawn to her for some particular reason?”

        The being made another buzzing, rasping sound. The TV crackled and the speakers vibrated. Michael’s teeth stung. The being tapped the interview table. “It is time for me to depart.”

        “I’m not sure we can allow that.”

        “I’m not asking permission. Your name is Michael.”

        “Yes,” his grandfather said.

        “Not you,” the being’s voice scraped. Then it pointed directly at the camera and its eyes swelled like mirrored balloons.

        Chills crawled up and down Michael’s body.

        “Boy. Boy in the basement. Your name is Michael.”

        “I don’t know anything about a boy in a basement,” came his grandfather’s calm, confident voice. “But Michael is a very common name. Can you be more specific?”

        “He’s in your basement,” the being said. “And you are gone from life.”

        Tears stung Michael’s eyes. He tried to reach up, to stop the VCR, but he felt frozen against the old rocker.

        “The boy Michael is looking right into my eyes. Right now. There’s a hole. A hole in his life, and I find it welcoming.” Three fingered hands reached for the camera, the blurry white being hunched over, as if he might crawl over the table.

        Poppa Mike’s voice continued, but the volume was dropping. He couldn’t make out the question his grandfather was asking. Rainbowed static swirled across the screen. The speakers vibrated, but the being’s voice was louder, clearer than before. “Michael in the basement,” it said. “Are you ready to meet me?”

        Michael’s voice rasped dry as sand, “No.”

        Shiny, scaled fingers curled through the screen and gripped the edges of the gray television. The shimmering eyes of the being filled the screen, and suddenly the TV exploded apart. Smoke, and glass and shards of plastic casing flew across the room. The VCR burst into flame, and the being sprouted like a luminescent beanstalk. It towered over Michael, crooked his head against the ceiling and leaned forward with its mouthless, noseless face. Polished ivory teeth sprouted from the pores of its skin, flipped inside and out, over and over.

        Michael felt helpless as a statue as the white devil reached down and touched his heart.

        “You’re his descendent,” the voice thundered. Stacks of junk trembled throughout his grandparents’ basement.

        Michael found himself able to nod. “Please don’t hurt me,” he said.

        “I don’t need to. Would you like to understand where I come from, boy in the basement?”

        Michael shook his head. “I don’t need to know. I don’t.”

        “I’m going to show you the holes in your world left behind by dead things. You’re young, and you’re better able to see them.”

        Michael cried. “I don’t want to see them.”

        “You feel it already. You might as well see.” The white devil dug two tapered fingers into the mirrored ponds of its eyes. It pulled and pried until the being’s face split apart. A blanket of silvery teeth shredded the world, as if reality were nothing more than wet paper. Behind it all lay a realm of cold black marble and an electric negative of the space he knew to be his grandparents’ basement.

        All around Michael, static echoes appeared. Rugged workmen dug out the foundation of the old house. A waterfall of cement poured while a blanket of workers were already smoothing it over with fanned trowels. His grandparents—young and vibrant—filled the basement with boxes and shelves. Shadowed trails of children smeared the space as his uncles and his mother played hide and seek through the years.

        He saw Poppa Mike sneaking belts of moonshine from a rusted old locker. A cacophony of laughter and celebration upstairs blurred with the roar of countless screaming matches.

        The corridors of the basement grew narrow with old junk and stacks of newspapers that withered into yellow flakes. Mice bulleted across the floor. Spiders spawned and crawled and wove sloppy webs in corner windows only to curl and wither away.

        Moments ran like dank rivers of must and dust and the air tasted of concrete and old copper pipes. Michael could no longer tell if the moments were forward or backward or all at once forever and ever.

        “There is only now,” came the white devil. “Only now and the deadness of moments, and the deadness of entire lives.

        “That is where I live, boy in the basement. And that is where I travel, and that is where I thrive. Those you love who leave are my feast. I follow my prey across the boundaries of time and space.

        “And though you will not die for many years—as I can see the ticking clock of misery both forward and backward written on your heart and etched on your bones—you will forever be more dead than alive, a fleeting spark of now. You are already here, always were, and forever will be nowhere.

        “Ask me something now, boy in the basement. It is my gift, because I believe you may understand the answer.”

        Michael gasped. The shadows of moments were so complete and total that the world become a blur of silver static. “Where is he? Where’s my grandfather?”

        That rasping sound erupted—devil’s laughter. “You truly wish to know?”

        “Yes!” he shouted.

        Giant silver eyes appeared inches from his face. “I ate him!”

        A swell of hot air filled the room. Michael flew back. The rocking chair clattered against the concrete floor. His bones stung. Everything was once more as it had been, except for the smoky stench of burned and shattered appliances.

        He found himself alone once more. Slats of sun beamed through a single window, and birds twittered in still morning.

        The VHS tape labeled “COPY” smoldered and the letters, his grandfather’s perfect print, charred away forever.

© 2026 Kevin M. Folliard  All rights reserved.

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