The Sins of the Father

by Daniel Celaya

Ezekiel took another tiny sip of the coffee he’d been nursing for the past six hours. It had long since grown cold, but the incremental sips were born out of necessity. It was too late to go to the store and buy another bag of coffee grounds, and he didn’t have the desire to go sting his palette with twenty-four hour gas station coffee that smelled like burnt pencils and tasted just as bad. 

Setting aside the cup, he turned his attention to a tape recorder and a collection of cassette tapes with fading dates listed on them. He’d found them wasting away in the attic of his childhood home. After his mother’s passing, he inherited the property and took to cleaning out the house. A yellowed note had been stapled to the box he found them in. Written in his mother’s hand, it said only they were tapes recorded years ago by his father, Mercer.

A part of Ezekiel wished to leave the tapes well enough alone, waiting for another blanket of dust to be thrown over them. He knew he couldn’t. He needed to hear the voice of the man who abandoned them decades ago. His mother grew distant and reticent whenever Mercer’s name was brought up. Perhaps these tapes would offer a glimpse of the man Ezekiel barely knew.

He took the first tape, dated March 1994, and placed it into the recorder. With trembling hands, either from apprehension or the caffeine surging through his veins, he pressed the play button. 

Static crackled like lightning, sending a shiver up his spine, throwing the hair on his arms up in taut unison.

“The company is setting up shop. There isn’t too much to report, but all the same, It was a good idea coming out here.” The voice paused for a moment, inhaling sharply and then exhaling. “We should be up and running next month. I’ll probably have more to say come then.”

With that, the recording ended. Hearing his father’s voice was like a bucket of cold water thrown onto his soul. He hadn’t heard it in decades, and he’d forgotten how calm and collected it was. 

“On to the next.” He said in a hoarse whisper. April 1994. 

“We finally got the building up and running. Took us years, but that’s what it takes in this line of work. Everything has to be perfect. I’ve got some of the old boys down on the factory floor putting in their hours day and night. We’re operating at full capacity, working our asses off to get everything processed, packed, and shipped out. The industry is booming, as it always is. We’ve got buyers from all over placing orders. Money is flowing like milk and honey.”

Ezekiel frowned. A business endeavor? These recordings were nearly thirty years old. His father walked out in ‘82, so that meant this little adventure of his was twelve years after the fact. Ezekiel’s excitement blunted somewhat, but his curiosity remained. 

He played the next tape.

“Cattle processing is slowing down a little. We’ve got so many the plant can’t keep up, but we’ll make sure they get where they need to be going, our pay is on the line.” 

A meat packing plant, maybe? Ezekiel wondered, leaning back in his chair. He listened to a few more, in each one, his father’s voice was calm, collected, and pragmatic. On and on, month after month, the same monotonous tone crackling through the recorder. Talking about the cattle, their behaviors on arrival compared to departure, the money he and his workers were making, over and over again, as though he was proud of it.

Ezekiel absentmindedly reached for his coffee, knocking it over. He cursed, rallying from his drowsiness, but nothing spilled out of the cup. 

Empty. The word was a quiet sough through the fading thoughts in his mind. 

He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for a moment, surprisingly comfortable. His body was ravaged and tired after a day of cleaning, the rationed sips of coffee didn’t have enough caffeine in them to keep him focused. He drifted quietly to sleep.

*  *  *

Mercer sat silently in his office, smashing the butt of a cigarette into an overflowing ashtray. With only a single window, his office was identical to the rest of the plant. A large window sat at the very top of the factory’s eastern wall, the side facing away from town. As a consequence, the plant received little natural light. The cattle lived and breathed under fluorescent light during the day, and near-darkness at night. Workers plied their grim trade with flashlights come sundown. Leaving the plant’s lights on at night could attract attention, even if the factory was secluded in the woods. Occasionally, a wail from the cattle might rip through the air, striking feebly against the sound-proof walls.

He lit another cigarette, taking an enormous drag while he turned on the tape recorder. “Been about a year now I’ve been at this. Cattle are still coming in, but the boys are starting to get on edge. This is the third time I’ve had someone tell me about seeing a shadow in the back end of the plant, near where the trucks pick up the cattle after we’ve found buyers for them.” He paused, looking up from his desk. The rancid odor of cartons upon cartons of cigarettes clouded the air with its stench, melding with the natural sweat that dripped down Mercer’s back like a fetid brook. 

“One of them even says he’s seen it out in the woods where we park our cars. No clue what to make of it. Most of these guys coming to me about this are blitzed out of their mind on hard drugs, or have been fucked in the head since they were young. They’re probably seeing things, working in the dark and in conditions like this...” His voice trailed off with a curse, grinding the cigarette in his fingers. 

*  *  *

Ezekiel awoke to birds chirping merrily outside his window. He groaned as he stood. The hardwood chair had ground his ass to paste. He rose to use the bathroom, washed up a bit, and made himself some food. The effort to not immediately fire up another tape was difficult, but he managed it all the same. After he had cleaned up and eaten, he finally allowed himself to return to his work. The recordings were monotonous, until he came to January 1995. Mercer sounded worried, and he mentioned workers seeing some shadow in the dark. Moreover, his father was cursing, the first he’d heard of it in the recordings. Eager for more, he listened to the next several tapes, and his skin began to crawl in fear. They were short, terse, and hurried. His father’s voice had lost its cool edge. He listened intently to this particular recording, dated May 1995. After it had ended, he sat rooted in fear, staring at the recorder.

*  *  *

“More sightings of that tall shadow, and something else is happening here. Any food the boys bring in spoils fast. Way too goddamn fast. I’m staring down an apple on my desk like it's the barrel of a twelve gauge, and I swear on my mother’s life it looks like it’s been festering inside the ass-end of a dumpster for weeks. I brought it in this morning. Something’s fucked here, and I bet it’s connected the mess we’re making in this damn place. Ventilation ain’t great, and the air is stale…” He looked up from his desk, certain that he had seen something pass from underneath his door, as though someone walked right across it, but he saw no one in his window. Unnerved, he continued, but never took his eyes off the door. “It’ll hurt our profits, but we need to hold off on bringing in more cattle until we can clean this place up. If we can’t feed the cattle…” he whispered. “The boys will have to go with docked pay for two weeks.”

Ezekiel stood from his desk and moved about his house, trying to shake off his fear. He remained away from the tapes for most of the day, pondering whether to return to them at all. Yet as the sun began to sink over the horizon, and darkness rose over his home with tenebrous wings, he found his morbid curiosity insatiable. He returned to them with a junkie’s fervor, and played the next tape.

*  *  *

Mercer paced around inside his office. Blood, urine, feces, and a cocktail of other filth had been meticulously cleaned, but the food still rotted. Workers reported a painful pressure behind their eyes whenever they stood in the darkness, their flashlights and the factory lights dimmed no matter how fresh their batteries, everyone reported a feeling of being watched, and almost half of his boys had seen a tall figure in the shadows all over the plant and outside it too. More than once someone tried to shine a light on it, but nothing was there. Nevertheless, fresh rounds of cattle had been brought in to recuperate their financial losses. They couldn’t slow down production any more. Their buyers would not have it. 

“The cattle are on edge.” He whispered, eyes darting around his office. “We try to ship them off to buyers as quickly as possible, but they hear us talking. They know something is wrong, some of them are asking questions.”

He took a hit from his cigarette, missing his lips three times before he got it right. His lungs burned as though he were inhaling sulfur.  “Some of the boys are saying they’re seeing this shadow in their homes or on the side of the road when they’re driving home at night. Seeing it in windows, mirrors, and reflections. Hearing whispers just before they fall asleep and right before they wake up. Jason has told me he hears his own voice whispering in his house when the lights are off. Worst of all, some of the boys are getting sick. I don’t need them spreading it to the cattle. If our buyers found out—”

Three bangs fulminated on the door to his office. He leapt back in his chair, nearly toppling over. The cigarette in his hand fell, and his heart pounded like an off-beat drum in his chest. Try as he might, he couldn’t muster the courage to ask who was there. He waited, limbs frigid in terror, goosebumps crawling across his body like ants. No one crossed his window, and you had to in order to reach the door. 

Mercer fingered the pistol in his waistband, the cold steel giving him a fraction of the comfort and courage it usually did. It felt too cold, too distant, too inhuman. He unlimbered the weapon and rose unsteadily to his feet, opening the door.
Darkness yawned out before him like the screaming maw of Satan. Only the heavy footfalls of his workers below dared intrude upon the silence’s dominion. It seemed none of them heard the knocks on his door.

Fear slithered down his back as a serpent would. He looked out the only window in the factory, seeing the row of dark trees that surrounded them. At the base of one tree, he saw an eerily tall figure, with what looked like eyes all over its face. It vanished as he blinked.  

Horrified, Mercer ran back into his office and slammed the door shut. “I saw it.” He said, his breathing dense with fear. “It looked like a man, but I can’t be sure. Maybe I’m seeing things? I have to be. Shit like this isn’t real—” He grabbed the tape recorder in a panic, accidentally turning it off.    

*  *  *

Ezekiel stared wide-eyed at the recorder. Silence shrieked in his room. He leaned back in his chair. Some are asking questions? He said to himself, horror running fetid fingers down his spine. What the hell was my dad involved in? 

Fearful, he sorted the remaining tapes. There was a seven month gap. Swallowing the pit in his throat, he set the next tape, and pressed play.

“We’ve tried to just ignore it, tried to explain it away for the last seven months. I…I don’t know how much longer we can do this. We’re processing cattle as quickly as we can, but we’re losing workers. They stop showing up. I had some of our boys march to their houses to remind them of their dues and duties, but they never find them. They’ve vanished, and sometimes some of the boys who go looking for them fall off the earth, too. We’ve put motion-activated cameras all outside the perimeter of the plant, just to make sure it's not some sting operation that’s underway. I thought we were secluded here, far enough away from town to be hidden, but something is out there. Every single night the cameras pick up movement in the woods, but we never see anything in the playback.” An unsteady breath escaped his lips. “Buyers are drying up. Calls from some of our most wealthy have stopped entirely… And…I think I caught whatever sickness is going around.” Another throaty breath. “My mind is racing twenty-four seven. There’s pain…and…light behind my eyes. I keep seeing things everytime I blink. I just feel like…something really bad is gonna happen if I don’t stop this whole operation…” His father muttered incomprehensible words, and the tape ended. 

A chill cut through Ezekiel. He again considered putting these tapes in the attic and never returning to them, but his desire to keep listening trumped his fear yet again. He stood, turning on every light he could in his room, hoping his fear would recede with the darkness.

Acting on pure instinct, he forced himself to play the next tape. September 1995. Curiosity and fear bubbled up in his body like a cauldron of stewing angst. There was only one more tape after this one, and it wasn’t dated.

Static. Static for minutes on end that grew to an unnatural crescendo, then ear-piercing silence. His father’s voice cut in with all the grace of a scalpel sawing through teeth.  “The boys are all dead. Their eye sockets look like wax candles that burned for too long. Their bodies are here, even those who disappeared but none of their cars are parked outside… The cattle have vanished, and the factory looks like it hasn’t been used in decades. There’s rust and graffiti everywhere. I’ve called every associate who’s ever interacted with us, but their phones just keep ringing and ringing. No answering machine, no one picks up, they just ring on and on…” He could hear his father’s footsteps echoing in an empty factory. “I think…I think I can see myself. There’s too many eyes...” The tape hissed and glitched. “The window in the factory is gone, so is the window in my office. It’s like they were never there in the first place.” Mercer said, breathless and quiet.

The recording ended. His father’s voice sent tremors of fear throughout his body. Ezekiel’s shaky hand snatched the final tape, and stuffed it into the recorder. 

*  *  *

Mercer lay huddled in his bedroom. His blinds were closed shut, the door locked. His waste piled in the corner, though his nose had grown used to the effluvia. His eyes were glued to the door, and to the shadow that stood right underneath it, as it had for the last three days. 

Knocks would fall on the door with three beats, the being on the other side whispering in the voices of his workers.

Fear kept his heart at a constant rate, too fast to let him sleep or calm down. Mercer felt like he would suffer a heart attack at any moment. He kept his gun close, too afraid to use it. Unbearable pressure built up behind his eyes, and his teeth felt like they were shaking. He tried to leave through his window on the first day, but when he pulled the curtains back, the window was gone, there was only a wall where once it had been.

Trembling as though he suffered a never-ending seizure, he inched toward his nightstand, and the recorder on top of it. 

Tears streamed down his ragged face. “It’s outside my bedroom…it won’t leave. It’ll knock on my door, it won’t stop whispering to me.” A bitter chill spread across his room like a miasma, and the knocking returned, offbeat and without its usual rhythm. It slowly built up speed and force. 

Mercer gasped, the frigid air felt like a whetstone sharpening his lungs. 

“What are you!?.” He wailed in a broken, harrowing voice. 

The door rattled and its hinges whined under the incessant knocking. Mercer’s adrenaline ignited his nerves in a blaze of terrified, maniacal emotion. He fired a salvo directly at the door, watching bullet holes rip through the thin wood with ease, until at last his magazine was empty.

The knocking ceased, but the shadow underneath the door remained. In each bullet hole, unnatural light streamed into his dark room like water flooding into a sinking ship. The recorder clicked off and then back on again as though another was using it. Something spoke to him, screaming in his psyche like the deafening silence of an unanswered prayer. 

That little box of metal and plastic had been his own personal confessional booth, it listened intently to Mercer’s gloating and fear with all the patience of an ageless hunter. The light in the back of his eyes stared back at him, blazing with such divine wrath that even hellfire would shy away from its tempest. Mercer’s grip loosened on the recorder. It fell to the ground with a thunderous crash. His eyes stared blankly ahead. 

“What have I been talking to this whole time?” 

A shimmering hand curled around the door.

Mercer’s body stiffened. The door slowly opened, revealing a burning silhouette where the shape of a man should be. Light sprouted from behind it like a multitude of vast wings. The pressure behind Mercer’s eyes began to swell and burn. A shriek of pain and mortal despair howled out from his throat. The figure approached him, impossibly massive in scale. Wheeling shapes circled round it like swirling eddies, eyes covering every inch of them. They peered deep into his soul, and found it hideously wanting. 

A flaming blade formed in its hand, putting the sight out of Mercer’s eyes forever. 

Ezekiel's mouth hung open. His father’s screams grew distant, as if he was being pulled further and further away from the recorder. Endless, harrowing silence followed, and the tape ended. 

Ezekiel stood, and laid in his bed, staring at the ceiling for hours. When he rose, he found another cassette tape that wasn’t there previously. It was red, and bore no date. In his shell-shocked haze, he put it into the recorder. A voice broke through static, but was frequently interrupted. 

“...Investigation is over… abandoned industrial plant hidden in the woods…—Year long period… Human trafficking… —Traffickers are all deceased… —immolation occurring from inside the eye sockets.” 

Ezekiel’s eyes widened like a tearing wound as the audio began to clear. 

“All victims have been identified and found. None show signs of psychological or physical trauma or abuse. Many don’t remember their time in captivity, who they were sold to, or where they had been shipped to. Yet each of them recall an identical story no matter when or where they were freed: being rescued by an unknown individual who told them not to be afraid.”

The static returned, driving needles in Ezekiel’s ears.  He grit his teeth and listened as closely as he could.

“Each of the victims offer wildly differing— …contradictory accounts as to what this individual looked like… —individual resembled someone the victim deeply trusted in their life.” 

The recorder clicked, and the static vanished. The stranger’s voice came through clearly. 

“Their ringleader, Mercer, kept a tape recorder and multiple cassette tapes. We’re unable to garner anything from them, as we only hear static when the tapes play. Technicians say they’re damaged beyond repair. We’re sending them off to his estranged wife, as she’s the closest living relative.”

A sickening pit began to fester inside Ezekiel’s stomach. The world seemed to grind to a terrible halt, silence echoed like distant whispers in his ears. My father was a monster… Ezekiel staggered back, clutching his head and keeling over in tears.

Whatever horror had come for Mercer was one richly deserved. Ezekiel prayed fiercely that it would never visit him, that he, the son of monster, had not inherited his father’s malice. 

He left the tapes and the recorder on his desk. Days passed before he built up the courage to play the red tape again, but it wasn’t in the recorder, or on his desk. It had vanished. Panicked, he played the first tape back, hearing only static. The next tape produced the same result. They all did.